An online delivery food service reduce printing costs
This local F&B online delivery food retailer is an SME with 25 staff. They are purely online and are in the business of cooking and delivering food. For their operational needs, they go through a lot of paper on a daily basis; from printing the daily food report for the kitchen, to packing list and invoices for the customers as well as promotional materials to be sent out with each delivery.
Their business ramped up along with Covid19 and they noticed that they are printing a lot more than before and the costs seem to be escalating. Due to the sheer volume of printing, it was also difficult to easily track and limit exactly what each staff was printing.
Problem
Staff printed full colour prints when it was unnecessary to do so, resulting in a sharp increase in click charges as the print volume increased.
Many people were sharing a printer and often enough, someone would accidentally take another person’s printouts and they would have to do a reprint again when they cannot find their prints.
Users would also print anything and everything, even when it was unnecessary. For example, printing a screenshot of a comment from a customer, which has already been reflected in the invoice. Or a full 5 paged PDF document, when they only require a paragraph from it.
At a glance
Problem
As deliveries ramp up due to Covid19, print costs also went up disproportionately as staff were printing freely and excessively.
Solution
Implemented the PaperCut MF solution to assign budgets and limit type of printing based on the staff’s jobscope.
Outcome
An immediate 20% reduction in print costs.
It’s only a printout, the company is the one paying for it anyway, not me, so just print!
Solution
PapercutMF with release stations
PaperCutMF was installed in the headoffice and “FollowMe Print” was implemented where prints follow the user and are only released when the user reaches the equipment. This gave the user a last chance to change their print settings (colour/non-colour/single/double side/quantity for example) or even cancel their prints, should they change their mind.
A budget was also implemented across the board, varied according to the jobscope of the user. For example, the design department had a 5x budget for printing compared to the admin department, as the former was expected to produce artwork in colour while the latter is expected to only print black and white documents. Implementing a budget helped kept excessive printing in check.
As colour prints are often the money burners in any print environment, colour restrictions were implemented for most staff and only the design department was allowed to print in colour, subject to a budget.
Outcome
Immediate cost savings of 20% in first month
Within the first month of implementation, the company achieved a cost savings of 20% in print costs. We had worked together and collected the data of the print habits of their operations, then worked out a realistic budget for each department to keep to without disrupting work.
With a budget and print limitation in place, users also became more mindful about what they should or should not print. It was a classic case of using software to do the difficult job of ensuring that people stay within company policies.
