RoI on Print

The very mention of the term RoI brings a mixed response in IT circles. While
the management always wants RoI on IT investments, the CIOs have maintained that
it is not possible to quantify IT returns in tangible terms. While the debate
continues on mainstream IT, a concept that is gaining ground is 'Print RoI'.
This is more of a recent invention by vendors who use this as value addition for
selling their solutions. Says LV Sastry, associate director, Xerox Global
Services: “What is not measured and monitored cannot be managed, or optimized.
There is one area of spend which is not under control and is not
measured. It is our experience, endorsed by consultants, that document costs are
significant and, more importantly, often not measured in an enterprise.”

According to industry experts, CIOs in the past have not given this area of
IT the much needed focus or thought. There is now a realization of escalating
and unmeasured costs, hence the CIO is now getting more involved in both
strategy planning and decisions regarding print management.
But measuring RoI on IT assets would be daunting and the same applies to
printing.  This is mainly because
expenditure and costs often sit in different departments, functions and areas.
For instance, individual departments often procure the maintenance services,
paper, consumables etc individually from local cost budgets. Consolidating them
into one fold can be difficult and time consuming.

Vendor RoI Models

Today every vendor has some kind of an RoI pitch that he passes on to the
consumer. For instance Canon, sometime back, came out with an RoI calculator
aimed at bringing to table best possible print solutions. HP meanwhile sells its
print offerings for enterprises based on its 'Balanced Deployment Strategy'
aimed at comprehensive print management. According to HP, the enterprise print
deployment strategy is often seen as a choice continuum between maximum
productivity and minimum cost.  Companies
have many options when it comes to deploying printers: they can provide a
printer per person or deploy printers on a centralized model. According to HP,
both deployment models have issues and to arrive at a comprehensive print
panacea, HP aggressively pitches on balanced deployment that employs different
kinds of print devices. HP recommends a balanced deployment strategy which
employs multi-function products (MFPs) and single-function devices when
appropriate. This approach can improve both print performance and cost, while
dramatically increasing device utilization, RoI and productivity by moving
advanced functionality closer to users.

HP says that reaching a state of balanced deployment, and optimizing printing
and imaging environment and document workflows, can yield substantial benefits.
A recent IDC research lists enterprises that were able to realize average cost
savings of 23% by deploying printers on the balanced deployment model. Says
HP's Samir Shah, “Balanced deployment is all about arriving at the best
possible print configuration. It is a judicious blend of technologies that
brings in maximum productivity and greater RoI.”

	There is now a realization of escalating and unmeasured costs. A CIO is now getting more involved in strategy planning and decisions regarding print management" -LV Sastry, associate director, Xerox Global Services
	"It is a well-known rule in management that 'what gets measured gets done'. The same applies for printing" -Thomas S Anand, chief strategy officer, WeP Peripherals
	"Balanced deployment is all about arriving at the best possible print configuration. It is a judicious blend of technologies that brings in maximum productivity and greater RoI" -Samir Shah, country category manager, Shared Printing and Connectivity, HP India

Meanwhile companies like Toshiba, Lexmark and Epson, though do not have
specific RoI models, pitch on some product differentiators. Epson says that its
DMPs have very low failure rate on print heads and electronic components. Says
Epson's Sanjay Khandkar, “Our dot matrix printers are known for their
legendary reliability; and our inkjets and All in Ones use Epson proprietary
Piezo electric technology and special inks like Durabrite, to give enterprises
the best possible quality. Also, most of our printers use individual ink
cartridges, which are priced lower than the competition's. These cartridges
allow users to change only the color that runs out thereby saving money on
consumables.”

Lexmark pitches hard on its laser printing solutions. According to PG Kamath,
general manager, Lexmark India, “We offer unique high yield toners and
software like Markvision, which offers CIOs the convenience of asset monitoring,
toner low alerts among other features that ensure high productivity in print
related activities within the organization.”

While HP, Canon, Epson and the likes have offerings across single function
and MFDs, pure play A3 MFD players like Toshiba advocate a new definition of
office productivity, which they term as RoI. Toshiba for one pitches hard on
copier-based MFDs, which are toner-based. Vendors of copier-based A3 MFDs claim
that these are easier to manage and have distinct cost advantages. A3 MFD
players like Toshiba say that RoI on copier-based A3 MFDs are higher than their
cartridge counterparts.

Print Outsourcing and RoI

Outsourcing is not just for large IT deployment and maintenance. Let's
look at a couple of prominent print outsourcers-WeP and Xerox Global Services.
The pitch print outsourcing vendors make is that the printing infrastructure,
though absolutely critical to business, is not necessarily the 'core
business' for most enterprises. Says Thomas S Anand, chief strategy officer,
WeP Peripherals, “We strongly believe that subscribing for printing services
on a 'pay for use' basis for all printing needs is the key to bringing down
printing costs. It is with this philosophy that we pioneered the printing
services for business printing in 2001.” Today, WeP has over 1,000
organizations using its print outsourcing services in over 600 locations across
the country. It is believed other print vendors who are predominantly into
standalone print sales, are also exploring outsourcing in a big way.

With WeP Printing Services, customers' pay on a 'per page' basis, and
this directly provides critical measurement of the prints. The benefit here is
that one gets to know, exactly, the number of prints taken on a particular
printer and the cost for it.  Says
Thomas: “With some organizations we have also provided solutions for
accounting for the number of prints taken on a user-wise basis.
In addition to these, the printing services help greatly by freeing up
critical management time. The CIO/CFO can concentrate on their core areas rather
than spend management time on nagging issues arising out of managing the
printing infrastructure.”

Says LV Sastry of Xerox, “Document outsourcing partners like us help
organizations to focus on their core business while managing the document output
in totality. Xerox provides a consultative approach by providing application
specific technologies.” As part of its print outsourcing paradigm, Xerox
Global offers models: Office Document Assessment (ODA) and Office Services (XOS)
services, which help customers assess, measure and monitor printer and other
output device investments.

Whether in-house or outsourced, enterprises can bring definite, positive
changes by adopting a comprehensive output management strategy that helps it
optimizing on spend on print devices.

Shrikanth G

shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in