Among all big questions for every growing company, there’s one which doesn’t always get the attention it deserves: when is the right time to upgrade your print environment? And for most businesses, the answer is generally: when you can’t take the pain anymore.
But that’s not really an ideal way to tackle scaling and growth. You shouldn’t be upgrading your print infrastructure because you have to, or when systems fail, or because your network performance has completely bottlenecked. You should be doing it proactively, ahead of the curve, in-line with your tech stack and long-term business objectives.
In this article we’re going to look at some signs that indicate it might be time for a change, and how to manage that change with minimal downtime and business disruption.
Recognizing the signs
There are a few signs that your existing print infrastructure (printers, devices, servers etc) might be coming to their end-of-life phase. You want to spot these signs early, before things turn critical and start impacting your core business activities. Kind of like visiting a dentist before the toothache.
Frequent printer breakdowns. An obvious one. If your printers need constant repairs, it might be more cost-effective to simply replace them with a new fleet. Alternatively you could consider a switch over to a managed print services solution and make your print fleet someone else’s problem!
High printing costs. Printing chewing up a significant part of your annual budget?This could be an issue with printer habits and user training, or it could be a sign that your print infrastructure is running inefficiently.
Slow print speeds. If you’re noticing bad latency and slower network performance, chances are your print environment isn’t up to speed. Literally. These are signs of congested servers, insufficient bandwidth, spooler overload, or all the above.
Lack of security features. Does your print environment have robust user access controls? Multi-factor authentication? Network segmentation? End-to-end encryption? Secure print release? If you’re shaking your head right now, it’s time to upgrade.
Multiple device headaches. If managing different devices, printers, operating systems and BYOD policies is making your sysadmins sad a print management solution could be just the thing to switch off the sadface.
Assessing print volume growth and capacity needs
This is something sysadmins should be doing all the time: tracking print volumes, usage patterns and network performance so they can feel when the system’s beginning to crack. Here’s how to capacity plan like a pro.
1. Track your print environment
We’re talking the number of print jobs, the pages printed, printer use by department, device types, everything. You should know the peak printing times and seasons, and the average print file size. This info will help you gauge how much data your printers and network are actually chewing through – and when they’re at their limit.
2. Forecast future print growth
You need to overlay all that printer data with your business objectives, your projected growth, and any seasonal surges that might affect your overall print capacity. Ideally, that capacity should be aligned with the business itself. So, the faster you’re growing, the more agile and flexible your setup needs to be.
3. Assess print infrastructure utilization
By this we mean: which printers actually get used, and do you really need all those multi-function devices (MFDsMFD)s? A high reliance on a few machines usually indicates a potential bottleneck, or the need for better load balancing. You should also evaluate whether print jobs are frequently queued or delayed, particularly during high-demand periods. This can reveal capacity strain.
4. Evaluate printer health and lifespan
Lastly, you need to factor in the health and age of your existing printer fleet. Track the performance of your printers, including print speed, downtimes and the frequency of repairs. If you can, also measure energy consumption, since older MFDs tend to be way less efficient than newer models. And that costs your money.
Once you’ve done all that, capacity planning comes down to three questions:
1. Does your existing infrastructure meet your current business requirements?
2. Based on projected growth, will it continue to meet those requirements?
3. Does the cost of upgrading now outweigh the cost of delay?
Quantifying print bottlenecks
If you’ve identified some print bottlenecks, that’s good! The first step in solving a problem is acknowledging it exists. Now comes the hard part, which is putting a dollar figure on those bottlenecks. Not every performance issue requires a full-on system upgrade, but if the issues are persistent, and they’re significantly impacting performance, it might be time to pull the trigger.
Loss of productivity. First, literally calculate the time employees spend waiting for printers to become available, for jobs to be completed, or for queued jobs to print. Multiply this by the employee’s hourly wage or average salary to quantify the bottleneck cost.
Maintenance and repairs. Next, track the number of repairs, IT tickets and service calls due to print bottlenecks. Calculate the direct repair cost, including parts, labor and service contracts. Also factor in IT man-hours (see: productivity, above).
Errors and reprinting. Print errors usually mean reprinting, which means wasted paper, time and ink. Try and quantify the cost of the bottleneck by measuring the time spent fixing the error, plus the cost of paper/toner, plus overall productivity loss.
There are literally dozens of factors you can measure here, from lost opportunity cost to network congestion performance, to the potential fines from data breaches and legislative non-compliance. It’s all down to what you value and what you choose to track. The important thing is to deal with print bottlenecks systematically, like this. Break down the costs, step by step, then add them up. Once you arrive at a figure, capacity upgrades become much easier to justify.
The different stages of print infrastructure evolution
It’s a funny thing, but when you’ve helped hundreds of commercial clients (like we have), you start to see patterns emerge. Turns out most businesses go through a fairly linear evolution when it comes to printing. These stages generally reflect growth, technological advancements and shifting business needs, and each one brings its own challenges in terms of complexity, scalability and control. Here’s how the evolution generally goes:
Phase 1: Ad-hoc and decentralized printing. In this initial stage, businesses typically have a few standalone desktop printers scattered across the office. Each department or employee might have a personal printer, leading to a decentralized approach. It’s not particularly sophisticated, efficient, or secure.
Phase 2: Centralized printing with shared devices. Next, businesses usually move from personal printers to a more centralized setup, with a few shared multi-function devices (MFDs) or copiers in the office. These printers are networked, allowing multiple users to print from a common device.
Phase 3: Managed print. After centralizing their printers, businesses often move to centralizing control through a print management solution. This may be paired with managed print services, where an external provider manages the entire print infrastructure. No matter which, the focus shifts from simply owning and managing printers to optimizing costs and workflows. Of course, then the cloud comes calling…
Phase 4: Cloud and remote printing. Once an organization has had a taste of print management, they start developing an appetite for a cloud-based print environment, allowing users to print from any device, anywhere, without the need for a direct connection to the server. Whether you choose a public or private cloud deployment, this is obviously great for businesses with remote or hybrid workforces, or those looking to cut their final ties to an on-premises server.
Phase 5: Fully integrated print solutions. In this final phase, print infrastructure is integrated top-to-bottom into broader business process automation (BPA), using artificial intelligence and machine learning to streamline document management systems, digital workflow platforms and cloud storage. Also known as printing Nirvana.
It doesn’t matter too much which stage of the print journey you’re at. What matters is moving in the right direction and identifying the most efficient times to upgrade. Print scaling will always be a question of cost versus opportunity, but hopefully with this guide we’ve demonstrated that a little cost up-front equals big opportunity down the track.
