Poorly managed printing environments create unnecessary costs for customers and new opportunities for solution partners.

Hodge-podge printing and imaging environments, those sprawling collections of standalone printers of all makes and ages, hide a dirty little secret: exorbitant maintenance costs.

According to technology researcher IDC, enterprises pay annual costs representing about $213 per employee in maintenance and supply costs for these poorly managed operations. It’s enough to make CFOs wish their devices could print money along with the latest marketing brochures.

Making matters worse, poorly maintained printing environments are often plagued by improper load balancing—the new color multifunction product (MFP) is overtaxed in the marketing workgroup, while the output from a central copy machine falls well below its contracted usage volumes.

Clearly, a poorly maintained infrastructure is too costly to justify, but how can companies take control of these resources? The answer is to contract with a solution provider that knows how to find and plug maintenance cost drains.

Here are some top maintenance problems and solutions that can help you cultivate new business.

Problem: Too many standalone devices make troubleshooting problems and routine maintenance overly time consuming and costly.

Solution: Networked printing and imaging architectures. Network-capable printers and MFPs, paired with easy-to-use administration software, offer two profit-enhancing opportunities for solution providers. Recommending network-capable devices should be a standard part of a printing and imaging modernization quote by solution providers. Not only will the added capabilities generate more valuable contracts, easier maintenance can be a prime ROI justifier for end users (enhanced workflow and document-management capabilities are other benefits with networking).

Dovetailing with the modernization tack are easy-to-launch tools for managing maintenance services. Solution providers can tap administrative tools, such as Hewlett-Packard’s WebJet Admin and Xerox’s CentreWare printer management applications, which let solution providers monitor and troubleshoot networked devices remotely via the Internet.

Problem: Infrastructure confusion. Many end users have no idea exactly what’s in their printing and imaging environment or how much (or how little) each device is being used.

Solution: Perform an infrastructure assessment to provide clients with an accurate baseline of their operations. In addition to quantifying the numbers of outdated and standalone printers and MFPs, the assessment should examine utilization rates. Balanced usage—where some devices are overused beyond their rated duty cycles while others lie idle much of the time—will avoid costly downtime and workflow bottlenecks.

Solution providers should target standalone printers, copiers, scanners, and fax machines, which can cost effectively be consolidated into a smaller number of networked MFPs. IDC estimates that balanced printing operations yield costs savings of about 23 percent compared with maintenance-heavy and breakdown-prone environments.

Problem: Ad-hoc maintenance and management policies. Companies that lack formal or enterprise-wide strategies fail to see the full cost and efficiency benefits. Another downside—Help Desks are disproportionately burdened by print-related calls at companies that don’t manage printing and imaging.

Solution: Act as a trusted advisor that makes sure printing and imaging resources are carefully maintained. Help customers understand the benefits of a managed maintenance program: greater device uptime and availability, less disruption from routine maintenance tasks, timely and accurate reports showing the cost and usage volumes of consumables, fast hardware ROIs and more efficient business processes.