Whether you're a small business or a large enterprise, you have a need to track and control your print. Taking a laissez faire attitude toward the print in your organization is a recipe for out of control costs and even data breaches. One of the best tools you can employ is rules based printing.
Rules based printing is a software solution that helps organizations cut costs, meet industry standards and secure information by way of encouraging, suggesting or enforcing print rules to end users. For a light touch, suggesting rules can help shape user behavior; a pop up stating "If you printed this document to the central copier instead of the desktop printer, you would save the company $0.50" for instance. Enforcing rules, on the other hand, completely eliminates the user's choice. Under the same circumstances, the user would be forced to print to the central copier.
Some rules include:
- Suggesting or enforcing printing to a particular device
- Suggesting or enforcing printing in black and white only
- Suggesting or enforcing duplex printing
- Discouraging or disallowing printing from specific sources (ie, a recipe website)
Depending on your rules software, you maybe able to set rules at group / department level, or even on an individual basis. Some software allows you to track and analyze user behavior so that administrators can set the most appropriate rules for the situation.
Read More: 3 Empowering Benefits of a Managed Print Service
According to case studies from Print Audit, a leader in managed print software, enacting rules can cut back on unnecesary printing as much as 97%, and the software can pay for itself in as little as a month or two.
A&A is proud to offer and implement Print Audit software to track, manage and improve the print in your organization. Let us know if we can assess your print environment and help you achieve your print goals!
Rules based printing is a great way to improve your print environment, but are you aware of some of the other great ideas and solutions in the print world? Contact A&A to learn more!