Print Management Expenses In The Hybrid Office…

Nearly 1 in every 2 employees will work from home part of the week and approximately 20% of them are working remotely three or more days each week. Businesses and their employees are realizing that they can be as productive working from home as they were in the office. The hybrid office allows employees to work part of their week in the office and the other portion remotely.

This has become the new normal for many and because around 50% of firms will continue to need to have documents printed, being able to affordably manage this expense in the hybrid work environment is more important than ever.

Printing At The Office

Fewer employees are working in the office daily, so businesses are reassessing their needs for office real estate, layouts, furniture, and even office print deployments. You may be looking at your printer or MFD fleet and wondering how many you really need.

But before you make that decision, thoroughly review the print needs of your new hybrid office. Consider which devices your company already has, what they can do, and how they will fit into an adjusted office layout.

At that point you can make decisions to:

Maintain your current printing devices and re-deploy them according to their individual capabilities, as well as how they can support the employees in your hybrid office.
Minimize the number of print devices in your office as deemed necessary.
Replace larger, most expensive A3 devices with space-conscious A4 multi-functional devices or printers.
Transition your business processes that consume more paper to digital processes.
Consider implementing a managed print service program to help reduce print expenses by tracking and managing print use.

Printing Remotely

The simple solution might be to allow your employees to use their own printer when they need to print while working remotely. You might have even considered providing them with a printer and shipping supplies as needed.

Unfortunately, neither of these options is the best way to manage printing remotely, and both present potential and expensive security risks that hackers would be able to exploit and create a compliance breach– you don’t want that.

Using a managed print services program to track the usage of remote print devices has been made easier than ever with tracking and reporting tools.

Keeping Your Hybrid Print Environment Secure

Businesses need to determine what materials their employees need to print and provide them with office-grade compact printers or multi-functional devices. These devices need to include enabled security features and drivers that can encrypt data between the computer and printing device as well as encrypt and delete data on the device’s hard drive disk.

In addition, consider print devices that offer user access control features like requiring a user ID and password or other authentication methods to prevent unauthorized use at home. Unauthorized printing wastes supplies and opens the way for a data security breach.

Managed Print Services for Hybrid Offices

Today’s market offers a variety of small, compact, and affordable A4 printers and multi-functional devices that meet the standards set above.

Using a managed print services program to track the usage of remote print devices has been made easier than ever with tracking and reporting tools.

Using these tools allows businesses to…

Track and monitor how employees are using their work-from-home printers and multi-functional devices.
Enforce authentication policies that ensure that the company-provided printers and multi-functional devices are only being used by authorized employees.
Give the employee the ability to decide whether the document is printed at home or directed to a printer in the office.
Set up automatic supplies replenishment so remote employees do not have to keep up with ordering and storing their print supplies.
Monitor any maintenance or service needs of the provided device.

These tools can leverage the cloud and can be deployed without using a centralized server. With today’s technology, it has never been easier to manage the print needs of your remote workforce.

Contact Waltz Business Solutions For Your Hybrid Printing Needs

Completing a thorough print assessment, creating redeployment strategies, and using managed print services are key steps toward being able to affordably manage printing in your new hybrid office.

Contact Waltz Business Solutions to come up with a plan for balancing print hardware, service, document management, workflow solutions, and support services to meet the current needs of your hybrid office. We would love to chat and schedule an assessment and consultation today!

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About Waltz Business Solutions

“If your document haltz… Call Waltz!” Waltz Business Solutions offers copying, printing, faxing, and document storage solutions from the best in the industry – Kyocera, Epson, and Hewlett-Packard.
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