By Tim Ferguson, 30 January 2007 12:00
NEWS
More than £1bn is wasted on office printing by UK businesses and government bodies every year.
Education and public administration are the biggest culprits, wasting around £225m - nearly a quarter of the total - on costly outsourced printing and poor internal print management.
This inefficiency is hampering business growth and productivity, according to the Centre for Economic Business Research (CEBR), which carried out the research.
Savings are possible by bringing more printing in-house and improving internal printing practices.
The report suggested the education sector could save around £115m per year.
These savings could release enough funds to fill existing teaching vacancies for two years, or fund 2.2 million primary school dinners, according to CEBR.
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Douglas McWilliams, CEBR chief executive, said in a statement: "It reveals that simply improving the organisation of printing - currently regarded as a relatively small area of business management - could yield productivity benefits of as much as £1bn a year."
The findings come from the Outsourced Printing - A Waste of Paper report, commissioned by OKI Printing Solutions.
Comments
There are 4 comments. Join the discussion
1. Nick Cole
This report doesn't indicate whether or not personal printing is included. But reading between the lines it probably is. And it is this that is the problem. While centralised printing makes a lot of business sense it is no help to someone who wants to read something they have been sent electronically at the time it has been sent; which is too often the case. Paper can be read and written on anywhere, unlike a power hungry PC (laptop or otherwise)
The habit of many people to circulate messages and contents in the guise of appearing efficient to as many people as possible initiates the problem. Many documents contain unnecessary amounts of coloured backgrounds with fancy logos and so on. Most of these documents are very big with hundreds of pages.
Whatever the merits of electronic communications it is still much easier to read and digest a document from paper rather than a screen. This includes something requiring editing or proof reading when a pen annotation is more convenient while thinking.
Unfortunately the use of ink and paper at a personal level is holistically expensive. Using a centralised printing process would alleviate much of this but would delay the document reaching its intended audience. And of course another consideration is the amount of time wasted by adding unnecessary creative touches such as different fonts, styles, graphics and so on.
There is no easy answer, other than to minimise the volume and size of documents sent to everybody. People need to think about what happens with their creations at the end user point. Brevity should be the mantra, (unlike this submission!).
2. Chas Moloney
I'm not surprised to see the results of the latest report from the CEBR.
Despite an increased awareness of the expense associated with printing and copying, companies are still are not aware of all the hidden costs. Our own recent research revealed that an astonishing 71 per cent of businesses are oblivious to print costs and I find it hard to believe that this attitude exists towards any other IT asset.
The CEBR is quite right to encourage businesses to rationalise their print strategy. The next step is to enforce these positive changes, using technology applications that give the user no choice but to print in a more secure, controlled, environmentally-friendly and cost-conscious manner.
Regards,
Chas Moloney
Associate director of marketing
Ricoh UK
3. Robin Houghton
It's not surprising that public sector and education are the biggest culprits. the situation will never change while there exists the culture of 'budgetism' - all those separate micro-budgets, ring-fenced for the entire financial year and controlled by middle managers with no interest in big picture thinking. 'It's my budget and I shall spend it, otherwise next year it'll be cut' is the standard thinking.
My husband works in a sixth form college where the music department on its miniscule budget can't afford to buy basic equipment like shelving, so everything gets piled on the floor like a car boot sale. But another department in the same building recently spent a fortune on full colour professionally printed A3 posters for its drama production, simply because they'd been given a generous budget and 'needed to spend it'.
It's more than ridiculous - it's criminal.
4. Simon Allen
Only £1bn???
I recall in 1995, when working in the HQ of a UK electrical High Street retailer: One of my low level tasks was to replenish printer paper ...
There was a 132 col matrix printer running green-stripey. I relaised that the pile of uncollected paper was growing. So I stopped putting new paper. Over the next couple of weeks:
I took the printer off line.
Then I threw away all the uncollected print-out.
Then I removed it to a store room.
No one asked what had happened to the printer. No 'fault' ticket was raised. That was when I knew how much money they were wasting.