72% Of Managers Do Not Know How Much Print Costs

According to new research just published 72 per cent of business managers admitted they had no idea what printing and copying cost their organisations.

That finding has been revealed by an independent study undertaken for Konica Minolta Business Solutions (UK) in to print output.

Konica Minolta Business Solutions (KMBS) said that when the comparing the awareness of company's IT managers' and non-IT managers' it was the non-IT managers who fared worse, with 82 per cent saying they had no knowledge of their organisation's print output costs against 62 per cent of IT managers.

The company said that those results are even more surprising given that print output can be a significant cost for many organisations and the potential savings to be made through efficient management can be substantial.

The research has also revealed that nearly half of all participants in the study thought that colour output was important, or very important to their organisations and a third of respondents thought that their organisations would increase colour print output if the cost were cheaper, indicating that price is not the major obstacle to increased colour usage by most businesses, said KMBS.

The survey also showed that 70 per cent of the companies surveyed scan and archive documents electronically, which increases to over three quarters for IT manager respondents.

KMBS believes that indicated that electronic document storage is now recognised as beneficial by most businesses.

Konica Minolta added that it offers a print audit consultation service that can advise customers about the most effective print management system for their businesses.

The audit process accounts for hardware and software for the management of print output processes.

John Howard, head of UK marketing at Konica Minolta, commented: "The rate of change brought about by technology innovation is fast and increasing.

Making sense of it and staying on the edge of the technology wave is a real challenge, as our recent survey results make clear.

The results show that even IT managers are not always aware of the changes and benefits of new technical innovations." He continued: "We know from experience with our print audit consultation service that taking a structured approach to print output reaps enormous benefits, including substantial cost savings.

Using networked multi-functional devices, such as our Bizhub systems, reduces operating costs.

It also saves space and storage requirements and has significant environmental benefits.".

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