How to Reduce Paper Waste in the Workplace

Money may not grow on trees, but trees made into paper certainly cost a lot of money. While recycling paper is a step in the right direction, it’s far better for a business’s bottom line if the paper wasn’t used for printing in the first place. In fact, businesses in the U.S. spend over $120 billion on printed forms, most of which become outdated within three months. Rather than simply managing paper waste with recycling, it’s time to save trees—and a lot of money—by reducing paper waste with paperless office software. 

 

Strategies for Reducing Paper Waste at Your Company

Reducing paper waste is an effort that involves everyone in an organization. Here are some strategies everyone across an organization can use to help prevent wasted paper in the workplace. 

  • Use printer monitoring software: Several different types of paperless office software products monitor who is printing, how much, and when. These metrics can help the company make strategic decisions about where printing is necessary and where the organization can cut back.  
  • Create a company culture of electronic communication: Printed forms are less and less practical, especially with remote work and global teams. Invest in features such as esignatures, chat platforms, digital content reviews, and cloud content storage such as OneDrive or Sharepoint.
  • Digitize existing content: Digitizing physical content items is a great way to prevent extra copies from being made and more paper being printed. You can scan images, faxes, photos, and forms. Bonus: they’ll be easier to find and share when they’re electronic. 
  • Take notes electronically: Taking notes electronically and using solutions such as OneNote or Evernote is a great way to reduce paper waste while also making your notes more searchable for future projects. 
  • Invest in a document management system: Document management software works for electronic documents as well as scans of existing documents. This prevents the need for extra copies and facilitates document collaboration. 

How Businesses Benefit from Reduced Paper Waste

Businesses that invest in paperless office software gain many company-wide advantages. Reducing paper waste is an environmental success—and  92% of consumers trust environmentally responsible brands. In addition to building trust, your business will see some other tangible wins along the way. 

For example, using less paper leads to immediate cost savings—paper, printers, ink, postage, and storage costs can add up. The average employee’s printing habits cost a company $725 per year per employee. Reducing paper usage saves space, too. By transitioning to digital storage, businesses can free up physical storage space, reducing the need for filing cabinets or off-site storage.

Increased security is another major benefit of moving away from excessive printed paper. Digital documents can be encrypted and protected with passwords. Access to documents can be restricted to authorized personnel only. This provides a level of security that’s hard to achieve with physical papers.

Digital documentation is safer against being hacked, but it’s also safer against physical danger. With proper backups, the risk of losing documents due to fires, floods, or other disasters is minimized. 

Other benefits you’ll see when you move away from those 8×11 sheets include the following:

  • Easier collaboration and access: Digital documents are easier to share and collaborate on, especially with tools that allow for real-time editing and commenting. This supports remote work arrangements and ensures that critical information is always at hand.
  • Better customer service: Easy access to digital records can lead to faster response times for customer queries or issues.
  • Easier compliance and auditing: Paperless office software solutions often come with features that allow for easy tracking of document changes, access histories, and versioning. 
  • Scalability: Digital solutions can more easily scale with your business, accommodating larger volumes of data without a proportional increase in physical space or manual effort.

Common Questions About Reducing Paper Waste at Work

Have questions about reducing paper waste in the workplace or investing in paperless office software? We’ve got you covered. 

What are the top features to look for in paperless office software?

When considering paperless office software, look for a product with automation features. These features often include naming, sorting, and batching capabilities. You’ll also want software with optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities, which makes data entry and document editing possible. 

What are some legal and compliance considerations with paperless software?

Security is always top-of-mind with legal issues. Make sure the paperless office software has authentication features for better data protection. Paperless software can also provide streamlined reports for compliance audits and help you track any incidents you may need to report. 

Does paperless office software have a mobile app?

Many paperless office software products have apps. Apps help you access information while you’re on the go, sign documents quickly, and communicate faster than you could when you had to hand printed packets to your team.  

 

Webinar Recap: Printonomics

Remember your last math class? 

You thought none of it would apply to your future career, and then, low and behold, you’re managing hundreds of printers and sweating bullets trying to track print costs.

This is particularly true for IT teams with complex, distributed print environments where quantifying cost, efficiency, and consumable waste seems like advanced calculus. 

Luckily, we hosted a webinar called Printonomics to help IT pros like you identify the actual costs of printing and turn what was once a complex math equation into simple subtraction. 

Watch the recording below or read on for a quick event summary. 

 

 

Printing Is Costing You Money

Everything has a price. But when it comes to printing, it’s not just about the cost of consumables like paper and ink; it’s the hardware, loss of productivity, and security vulnerabilities that exponentially drive up costs. 

And, if you want to really point the finger, your print servers are the main culprit for higher print costs. We highlighted a few reasons why:

  • Single point of failure: Printing stops when print servers stop.
  • Deployment overhead: Failed scripts and GPOs lead to more helpdesk tickets, meaning more money out of your company’s pocket. 
  • Maintenance and patches: IT pros dedicate a lot of time to maintenance and security patches—especially when spooler vulnerabilities are exploited.
  • Security vulnerabilities: The average cost of a data breach in 2023 is $4.45 million—a number that has risen by 15.3% since 2020.  

Even with a perfect track record: Zero vulnerabilities, no failures, and no failed deployments, Quorcirca still estimates that companies spend around $3400 yearly per print server

Truth be told, the odds of having a perfect year of printing are the same as winning the lottery.   

 

Printing Is Costing You Time

Time is money in the eyes of an organization. And when IT teams constantly spend time on print-related issues, your company could argue they’d rather invest money in your team tackling mission-critical objectives—not printing. 

But which areas of printing does IT spend the most time on?

According to one study, IT teams spend an average of seven hours on print-related tickets per 100 calls. On top of stacks of helpdesk tickets, IT teams find themselves stuck spending time reacting to low consumables, pulling print reports from various OS and manufacturers, and updating printer drivers.

Fortunately, there are a few ways to reduce time spent on print management. Our experts identified a few modern solutions that help you erase tedious troubleshooting tasks from your agenda, including:

  • Self-service printing
  • Real-time printer alerts
  • Automated reports
  • Customized and automated deployments
  • A dedicated printer driver repository

We’ll talk more about how you can implement these later, but these solutions also help you address sustainability initiatives, which we cover in the next section.

 

Saving Through Sustainability

Sustainability has become a must for companies building for future success. Gartner found that 80% of business leaders see sustainability as a strategic play to optimize and reduce costs

Sustainable printing, however, has been a proverbial thorn in the side of IT. Ninety percent of North American companies are unaware of how many printers they have. Without a clear view of how many printers you have, it’s fair to assume those companies don’t know how much they are wasting. Formstack notes around 30% of print jobs never leave the print tray, and 45% of documents are trashed by the end of the day. 

So, what steps can companies take to start printing more responsibly? Here are a few tips:

  • Centralize your print environment to learn what you have in your ecosystem.
  • Track print jobs based on user, group, and department to determine your consumption.
  • Set quotas based on cost or volume to discourage unnecessary, large print jobs.
  • Add an authentication step for each print job with pull printing functionality.

These tips fall under the same umbrella of creating intentional printing habits. Once you have these practices and features established, that’s when the savings start to trickle in. You’ll see paper and ink consumption drop, users will become more aware of what they are printing, and confidential documents won’t sit in the print tray.

 

Addition by Subtraction

How do you add value to your team through subtraction? 

The solution is simple: Eliminate your print servers.

PrinterLogic helps you cut costs and reclaim the time you’ve lost by moving your printer objects from print servers to our centralized, cloud-native platform. Admins can deploy printers without GPOs, track print jobs, and empower end users to install printers themselves from a single UI. Moreover, our solution leverages direct IP printing to keep jobs on the local network, eliminating spooler vulnerabilities for good. 

 

See How Much You Can Save

Want to put a number on your potential cost savings after eliminating your print servers?

We’ve developed a formula to help you calculate your print savings by answering eight simple questions about your current print environment.

Try our free print savings calculator now.

Reduce Printing Costs With Effective Print Management Software

Many organizations begin researching print management solutions to eliminate (or avoid) print servers and introduce greater efficiency and simplicity into their print environment. That could be through features such as centralized administration, self-service printing for end users, auditing and tracking—or a combination of all of the above. 

 

What makes a print management software “cost-effective”?

The best print management software minimizes infrastructure and synergistically leverages modern print features to help companies reduce costs and increase return on investment (ROI). 

What’s often overlooked is that it takes a holistic system to generate maximum cost savings. A piecemeal approach through one or two discrete print management solutions that are limited in scope and function will only result in piecemeal cost reductions—not counting the fact that each solution also requires a separate investment.

In multiple case studies conducted by the independent research firm TechValidate, PrinterLogic is a print management solution that reduces printing costs and commonly generates an ROI of around 200% or more. A few more organizations have reported an ROI as high as 500%. 

But how does PrinterLogic’s SaaS solution help companies generate such an astronomical ROI?

Read on to find out how admins drive down costs with PrinterLogic. 

 

Elimination of Print Servers

Print servers aren’t just big fancy boxes in your server room. They cost money to install, maintain, upgrade, and replace. Quorcirca estimates the average cost to maintain and license a print server to be around $3400 yearly. Not a small number, especially when working with a few of them. What’s worse is the time and productivity wasted because of not-so-unexpected issues, including server crashes, failed deployments, and slow printing speeds. 

PrinterLogic replaces your print servers with a serverless, direct IP printing solution, eliminating all those financial outlays. Implementation is quick and easy, too. Using our automated migration tool, you can move all printer objects and drivers from your print servers to our centralized Admin Console—which we’ll cover more in the next section. 

 

Centralized Administration

After implementation, admins can manage, edit, create, and remove printers across the enterprise—no matter how distributed the print environment—from a single pane of glass. PrinterLogic is true SaaS print management software that gives you full visibility into and control over every printer in the organization, ultimately saving countless hours previously spent grappling with the finer points of printer management. 

On top of increased oversight, admins can identify underutilized printers to help minimize the company printer count and reduce electricity consumption. 

 

Self-Service Printing 

End users of all skill levels can easily view, identify, and install nearby printers themselves with an intuitive Self-Service Installation Portal. Users can simply open the customizable floor plan map or drop-down list to access nearby printers. Admins can add or subtract printers from the user’s view at any time within the Admin Console, helping eliminate unwarranted access to specialty printers or printers used by specific departments. 

This feature alone results in up to 95% fewer print-related helpdesk calls, saving time and boosting employee productivity. 

 

Comprehensive Tracking and Auditing

PrinterLogic provides a crystal-clear window into all aspects of your print environment—including the quantifiable details of page counts, ink and toner usage, and more. This alone can account for massive reductions in printing costs, as it provides a basis to monitor and address the individuals, groups, and departments responsible for the overuse of consumables. To keep executives informed on print costs and volume, admins can set up automated reports to be emailed monthly, quarterly, or yearly. 

 

Optimized Printer Uptime

In its ability to remove single points of failure and print-halting issues like driver conflicts, orphaned printers, and stuck jobs, PrinterLogic provides your organization with a print environment synonymous with rock-solid reliability. Less downtime means more revenue and fewer costs devoted to troubleshooting.

If a printer does need servicing, SNMP Monitoring and Alerts with PrinterLogic helps admins take care of printer issues before they happen instead of taking on bush-league helpdesk calls like “printer needs paper” or “printer is low on ink.”

 

Eco-Friendly Printing

It’s hard to find solutions that can lower costs and promote sustainability. 

PrinterLogic makes it possible in two ways:

  1. Adding a simple step before printing to create intentional printing habits.
  2. Empowering admins to configure default printer settings.

Features like pull printing and Secure Release Printing ensure that users authenticate at the printer before they print. Since print jobs are held in a queue instead of going directly to the print tray, users can cancel accidental color print jobs, documents with typos, and duplicates that would otherwise increase costs. They can authenticate via various methods, including QR code release, web browser, badge swipe, or by entering a PIN on the printer control panel. 

To prevent users from accidentally printing in color or simplex, admins can configure printer settings to default to greyscale and duplex after each print job. This can be done en masse or to individual printers, depending on the needs of your end users. 

 

Advanced Print Security

According to IBM’s 2023 Cost of a Data Breach report, the average cost of a data breach globally is $4.45 million. And this number has risen by 15.3% in the past three years. 

So, how does PrinterLogic ensure you’re not a victim of a print-related data breach?

PrinterLogic extends the security of your print environment to your mobile employees and remote workers via Off-Network Printing capabilities. Instead of end users relying on unsecured home printers to print sensitive information, remote users can print directly to any networked printer in the office to pick up later or collaborate with a colleague to ensure its retrieval at the printer.

PrinterLogic adds a Zero Trust layer of security to your print environment via integrations with popular identity providers. All users must authenticate and verify their identity before accessing printers in your environment. And, to top it off, our SaaS print management solution is ISO 27001:2013- and SOC 2 Type 2-certified which helps your company stay industry-compliant and protects your critical data. 

For more info on security and privacy with PrinterLogic, click here.  

 

Calculate Your Potential Cost Savings

We’ve shared the cost-saving features of our SaaS platform. But how can you put a realistic dollar amount on your savings after eliminating your print servers? 

Our print savings calculator accounts for print server maintenance costs, consumable usage, and printer driver updates to help you generate your potential savings after eliminating your print servers with PrinterLogic.

Try the free print savings calculator now.