As more and more of the IT side of your business moves to the cloud, don’t let your printing be the thing holding you back.
Implementing a Cloud Printing environment, overseen by a managed print services provider like Carden Managed Print offers advanced enterprise features and can save you money on both your IT and printing costs.
Today’s cloud printing services cover a range of private, public and hybrid cloud options. No matter which cloud platforms your business utilises, your printing technology needs to be able to keep up as you transition from an on-premise to a cloud model.
Here are just 5 of the reasons that organisations are embracing cloud printing as part of their larger cloud strategy.
1. Reduce Your Printing Costs
Transitioning to a cloud printing ecosystem reduces the capital expenditure and operating costs associated with a traditional printing environment.
Cloud printing servers reduce the need for physical printing servers, even in the largest offices. Not only do you not have to pay for the servers, you also don’t have to pay for their upkeep or their hefty electricity bill any more either.
2. Reduce Your In-House IT
Many organisations’ IT help desks say that printing issues account for over 50% of their calls.
A managed print service not only deals with the networking and cloud integration of your printers but also the hardware itself. Network engineers will install, manage and maintain the printers, copiers and fax machines for you. You just need to press “Print”!
By partnering with a managed print provider, your in-house IT team has more time to dedicate to critical issues and long-term projects across your IT network.
3. Enhanced Print Analytics
In order to save money, you first need to know how and where you’re spending it. Moving your printing systems to the cloud allows you to tap into advanced print usage analytics.
- Find the users, departments and projects that are eating away at your printing budget.
- See your usage statistics and trends over time.
You can use this data to identify the pain points in your company’s printing processes and being to streamline them or integrate the data into your business’s existing analytics platform (such as Microsoft Power BI).
Most advanced cloud print platforms offer analytics around print usage, with some integrating with best of breed business intelligence tools such as Microsoft Power BI or Google Data Studio.
4. Customise Your User Groups and Rules For Maximum Efficiency
Master your printing administration to reduce wasted printing and make life easier for your employees.
Printer groups and rules can help to optimise and automate manual processes (for example, setting an entire department to automatic duplex printing).
You could also use these admin tools to set page limits by user, device or department (particularly useful for those wanting to limit personal use of the office printers!).
5. Support for Virtualised Environments
As an increasing number of organisations now have employees working from multiple locations there has been an increased reliance on Virtual Desktops (VDI) and VMware (VM). This can cause technical problems when trying to integrate these systems with existing printing infrastructure.
Cloud printing systems can help to overcome these issues by providing dedicated resources for users in virtual environments, delivering the same printing experience to all users.
Cloud adoption continues to increase across the enterprise-IT landscape. In order to stay competitive, it is important to ensure that every aspect of your office can coexist efficiently. Cloud printing offers the chance to revolutionise and streamline one the oldest but most costly aspects of your business’s IT.
Speak to Carden Managed Print today to learn more about cloud printing and the other benefits of transitioning to a managed print service.
