How Can LDI Help Customers Gain Control Of Their Print Costs?

Getting control of your organization’s print expenses can be tough to do on your own. More often than not, companies are left uncertain of why their print costs are so high and what they can do to change them. That’s where managed print services can help.  

LDI has provided managed print services to small to large organizations for twenty years. We have recognized how convenient it can be for customers to depend on the same print devices and print tactics they have relied on for years. However, we have seen how helpful evaluating and optimizing their print infrastructure has been to reducing print costs.

This article will break down what LDI’s Managed Print Services program includes and three significant ways it helps customers control their printing costs. By the end of this article, you will have a better idea as to how LDI works with clients to permanently optimize their print environment to lower print costs for good.

What Does LDI’s Managed Print Services (MPS) Include?

LDI’s Managed Print Services (MPS) includes the ongoing management of a customer’s print environment, which consists of printer copiers, multifunction devices, fax machines, and print consumables under one unified program.  

While MPS programs vary depending on the provider, LDI’s MPS program involves a thorough assessment of a customer’s print environment to better understand how to optimize their fleet of devices, workflow, and document output moving forward.

LDI’s managed print services help customers control their print costs while optimizing their current print environment.

Let’s break down three fundamental ways LDI helps customers gain control of their print costs.

3 Ways LDI’s Managed Print Services Help Customers Control Print Costs 

LDI’s managed print services focus on helping customers control their current print costs, environment, and fleet through the following three fundamental ways.

Let’s dive a bit deeper.

1. Provides A Print Assessment & Data Analysis

First, LDI’s managed print services division provides a complimentary print assessment to understand your organization’s print environment. An assessment is completed through real-time monitoring software that tracks print behavior, device usage, print waste, activities, and device inventory.

This essential data helps LDI better understand what you are spending on your print environment to recommend solutions.

Undergoing a print assessment and having a managed print provider analyze the retrieved data can help your company gain insight into your current print infrastructure that you may have never seen before.

Costs of supplies, repair services, print hardware all add up and contribute to your overall print costs. 

Analysis of current costs is based on the costs of products, consumables, and replaceable parts as purchased by your organization. The cost elements include:

• • Toner and Ink
  • Parts and Labor
  • Break-fix Service
  • Printer Replacement Costs
  • Power Consumption

Cutting costs related to these elements start with first assessing your print behavior to make long-lasting changes that can significantly impact your business operations.

2. Optimizes Your Printer Fleet

Optimizing a fleet of printing devices ensures that the proper assets and reporting metrics are fully affected.

What does that mean? Your printer copier fleet should help your company fulfill its print needs while not costing an arm and a leg to do so.

LDI optimizes the customer’s current fleet of network devices by observing and determining how each printer copier functions, how updated the device is, and its purpose.

Printer fleet optimization essentially involves seeing ways to improve printer placement and possibly reduce underutilized and aging devices. The capabilities of your fleet can be enhanced by using software applications to improve document workflow and basic business document distribution processes. 

Print management applications such as uniFLOW and PaperCut help customers monitor their print environment to check their devices and securely access print jobs. 

3. Helps You Create A Print Budget 

A print assessment provides you with the necessary data to make long-lasting changes in your print environment. However, the collected data regarding your printer fleet, device usage, and print behavior are the essential building blocks required to create an accurate print budget for your company.

LDI’s MPS program budgets the amount of money spent per month on all toner cartridges, including mono and color ink, maintenance kits, and service for all printing devices through implementing two essential elements.

These elements include implementing a Just In Time inventory of supplies and modifying consumable pricing to an aggregate Cost Per Page (CPP) metric. 

Let’s break it down even further. 

LDI’s Just In Time Inventory Of Supply

Through LDI’s “Just In Time” Inventory of supplies or automatic supply replenishment, all print supplies, including toner cartridges, and maintenance kits, for every print device, are replenished once levels are running low.

Levels can be customized to reorder new supplies once it reaches a certain level that the customer or LDI feels is appropriate.

For example, LDI tracks toner levels to see how much black and white versus color toner is left to be used within each device every individual order of supplies will come labeled with the same serial number as the device it’s for so that the person installing the supplies knows where it goes.

LDI’s Cost Per Page (CPP) Metric

Cost Per Page (CPP) is a metric used to quantify how much every page costs to print while using a printer-specific toner or ink cartridge. 

When qualitatively and quantitatively assessed, LDI has found our customers’ cost per page ranges from $.015 to as high as $.03 per page for monoprints. For color prints, the cost per page can be as high as $.15 per page. 

Keep in mind that when calculating a customer’s cost per page, we’re considering the following:

• • • • Hard Costs:
        • Toner/Ink cartridge
        • Maintenance/Fuser Kits
        • Break Fix Repair Costs
      • Soft Costs: 
        • Internal IT Help Desk Support
          • Carrying costs are the various costs a business pays for holding inventory in stock. An example of this would be the over-purchase of print cartridges beyond the need of the device. 
        • Carry Costs of Toner/Ink Cartridges
        • Sunk Costs of Toner/Ink Cartridges
          • A sunk cost refers to a cost that has already occurred and has no potential for recovery in the future. An example of this would be the purchase of cartridges on hand for printers no longer in use. 
        • Order Placement
        • PO Processing
        • Payment Processing

LDI’s Managed Print Services are all-inclusive, meaning that there is no order to place for consumables, break fixes, nor no PO to process or check to cut. Our MPS program will cover that for you at no extra cost.

Based on our customers’ environment, we have seen our average mono cost per page range from just under $.01 to $.012 and color from $.07 to $.10 per page, offering savings from 20 to 40%.

Ready To Take Control Of Your Print Costs?

Managed print services can help companies control their current print costs by optimizing their environment, re-evaluating their printer fleet, and understanding their print behavior.

MPS may be an excellent fit for a company unaware of how much they are spending monthly on print costs or knows they are overspending for print supplies. Yet, MPS may not be a good fit for an organization with an internally managed print team or dedicated employee focused on keeping track of print costs, mitigating print waste, hardware upkeep, and more.

LDI’s MPS program comes in handy for those who need an extra hand to control their print environment. LDI provides complimentary print assessments before recommending solutions.

Contact an LDI representative today to have a one-on-one consultation regarding a print assessment or any print-related questions you may have.