Is your IT department spending most of its time chasing an ever-growing pile of support tickets? It’s a common problem. Instead of working on the meaty, long-term strategic stuff, IT teams get stuck in an endless troubleshooting hamster wheel. And the truth is, when it comes to printing at least, a lot of these tickets are preventable.
Why is print management so support-ticket heavy?
Print management refers to the systematic control and administration of print services. That includes print policies and protocols, monitoring and reporting, quota management, cost allocation, device monitoring, and network security. For a lot of organizations, IT becomes the default print management department, but that’s not always the most efficient allocation of resources.
Here’s where print management software can help:
Streamlining printer driver deployment
Deploying print drivers across multiple MFDs and devices can be a pain, especially for decentralized teams. Print management software fixes that issue by giving sysadmins a unified console where they can manage all drivers across the network. It also provides a repository for all necessary drivers, so they’re not floating around in cloud storage folders, or on USB sticks.
Automating print queue management
Spending most of your time untangling print queues? Some third party print management software, like PaperCut, can automate print queue creation , and even auto-assign print jobs to the most efficient printer on the network (based on location, current load, or any other parameters you want). This optimizes print resources, cuts down on wait times, and takes work off IT’s desk. Win win.
Self-service print solutions
Print management software is mostly directed at admins, but it’s worth remembering there’s an entire User Client side, too. User Clients help transform your print environment into a slick, self-service machine. For example, you can set up software for users to check and update their print balance, toggle pop-ups, show system messages, authenticate print jobs, and even incentivize more efficient printing. The more users can do themselves, the fewer tickets flow through to IT.
Enhancing print security
In any print network, there’s an inherent tension between security and useability. The trick is to design a system that’s robust and secure, but also frictionless. Print management is ideal for this, since it gives IT granular control over user authentication and access controls. You can quickly set up new users, update passwords and PINs, issue swipe cards, and refresh print quotas and balances. What used to take hours is now run through one central, easy-to-navigate dashboard.
Proactive monitoring and alerts
Prevention is always more efficient than cure. True in medicine, and true in IT. It’s much faster, cheaper and less painful to proactively monitor and fix your print environment, rather than waiting for something to go ‘boing’. With software like PaperCut, you can configure custom notifications , alerting you to anything from low ink and toner, to printer errors, to security breaches and application glitches. There are also systems in place that allow sysadmins to proactively monitor and audit their network health.
Managing remote printing
Remote and hybrid work have been great for employees. Less so for IT managers, who now have to wrap their systems around a mess of BYO devices, multiple operating systems, unsecured home WIFI networks, and shonky cyber hygiene. All this, unsurprisingly, has led to a surge in help desk tickets (and embarrassing data breaches ). With print management, you can easily integrate mobile and remote print solutions, setting up secure cloud-print servers, and allowing employees to print from anywhere, on any device. We’ve written more about the benefits of remote printing over here .
As you can see, with the right systems in place, and the right print management software, your print environment can (more or less) run itself. And by taking print tickets off your sysadmin’s desk, you’re freeing them up for more value-driven tasks. And isn’t that why you’re paying them in the first place?
