November 23, 2021. My article “How to Reduce Printing Costs in the Office in 2022?” was published on IT Channel News.
Every modern company works with a constant stream of printed documents: accounting reports, invoices, contracts, warranty cards. The larger the organization, the heavier the document flow — and the more time, money, and effort gets swallowed up by the printing process. Without proper control, and without ensuring that documents move safely and efficiently both inside and outside the office, the financial losses can be surprisingly significant.
The good news: there are four concrete levers to pull, and none of them require a complete overhaul of your infrastructure.
One powerful device instead of many small ones. The trend was already clear in 2021 and has only accelerated since: companies are consolidating. Instead of a personal desktop printer for every desk or small team, one high-performance MFP serving an entire department or floor does the job better and cheaper. The upfront cost may be higher, but the savings on maintenance, consumables, and downtime more than make up for it. In Russia, the rise of open-plan offices made this an especially natural fit.
Digital transformation of document workflows. This doesn’t mean going fully paperless overnight. It means systematically replacing paper-based operations with digital ones — forms that feed directly into a server database, scanned documents routed automatically to the right recipients, workflows that no longer require printing at all. Vendors of printing devices have been building software ecosystems around exactly this, and by 2021 the tools were mature enough for even mid-sized companies to implement them effectively.
Authorized printing. An employee sends a document to print, walks up to any available device, and authenticates — via a personal card or PIN — before anything comes out. This single change eliminates forgotten pages in trays, cuts paper waste dramatically, and allows companies to restrict color printing access by role. Given that color printing can cost several times more per page than black-and-white, controlling who can print in color is one of the fastest ways to reduce costs without anyone noticing a change in their daily work.
Original consumables only. This one I feel strongly about. Third-party cartridges often look like a bargain — until they damage the device, void the warranty, and send you to the service center. The repair costs and downtime will far exceed whatever you saved on the cheaper toner. Buy certified, original consumables. It’s not an area to cut corners.
The conclusion I drew then is still the right one: even small companies can achieve significant savings by introducing digital transformation and authorized printing. These solutions require investment at the integration stage — but the return, in most cases, comes faster than expected.