Most organizations simply have no idea how much they print and how much it's costing them!

I'm about six months of Sundays away from completing the manuscript for a book I'm writing on print management that carries the working title of "EcoWise Printing: Gaining the Full Value of Printing in a Responsible Manner".

In the meantime, I thought I would take this opportunity, and perhaps a few others to follow, to share some thoughts related to the primary goal of my effort, which is to create awareness about the costs of printing–both financial and environmental–and offer some prescriptive guidance on how to reduce both.

Although I'm seeing signs of a growing awareness of the print cost problem, most organizations simply don't know how much they print or what their print-related costs all add up to.

In addition, the management of print is still typically decentralized in many firms, thus adding further to the print volume and cost measurement challenge; and even those who have it centralized often have difficulty keeping it that way because the start-up cost is so low for printing. Printers are now so cheap that a department manager or an end user can simply go to the nearest office supplies store to buy one, and the cost may go unrecorded because it's just one of many items consolidated on someone's expense reimbursement submission. Thus the cost may never seen by those interested in profiling the entire print environment.

However, it's not the start-up cost that gets you–it only represents about 5% to 10% of what you ultimately end up paying in total when you factor in the ongoing cost of consumables such as toner cartridges and paper. This is where the real cost and environmental impact stems from, but these items, too, can be bought by individual users at retail, and the costs also go unrecorded.

As a result of these and other factors, an IT manager may know about his/her capital budget for printers and the cost of whatever maintenance contracts are in place, but not be aware of how much is being spent on personal printers and on supplies and thus not know the true total cost of print for his/her organization.

In my next posting, I'll comment on why people print and why print volumes are going up rather than down–so much for the 'paperless office'!