Tech Primer

Business Printing Outsourcing

What is Business Printing Outsourcing?

Many organisations in India are outsourcing their printing needs to cut printing and maintenance costs and protect themselves from investments in printers that become obsolete. Vendors such as WeP Peripherals and Xerox are tapping the potential of outsourced business printing. Business printing outsourcing is an important trend and many value-added offerings centre around this concept, printing on the move being one of them.

How does Business Printing Outsourcing safeguard a company from technological obsolescence?

Printer purchases are among the last in the IT purchase cycle of an enterprise as product benchmarking and comparison are time-consuming. After completing a printer purchase, an organisation may find that a printer is getting outdated and needs to be upgraded. Product lifecycles are shorter in the printing domain, and maintaining obsolete products takes time and money. Consumables are at the heart of any printer, and the older the printer the higher the consumables cost as they too have a shelf-life. Hence, by outsourcing all its printing requirements, an enterprise can get the latest technology upgrades in printing and avoid facing technological obsolescence.

Does Business Printing Outsourcing reduce TCO?

Organisations incur huge expenditure on the purchase of printing equipment and consumables. Companies have found that by outsourcing their printing requirements they have been able to control their printing costs and gain tighter control on what is being printed.

How can organisations have better control over the management of their printing requirements?

There have been cases in some enterprises where it has been found that a lot of printing was taking place for unofficial use. By outsourcing printing requirements, every printout can be documented and a complete record of the number of prints is maintained, thereby reducing overall costs and wastage. Additionally, printers come with

different warranties, and keeping track of them and entering into annual maintenance contracts consumes a lot of time and money. Organisations are also faced with the task of maintaining and managing printers. Tracking the number of pages printed across branch locations in the country is difficult. By going in for a Business Printing Outsourcing service, printer management becomes simpler as there is transparency in the system.

Which is the most popular printing option exercised by enterprises within Business Printing Outsourcing?

Of the many options available for business printing outsourcing, the onsite printing option is the most common. In this, the printer is installed at the customer’s site and the complete printing operations are managed by vendors such as WeP Peripherals and Xerox. This is primarily because customers want to see proof of printing on the spot and order reprints as per their need. The other option is offsite printing. Vendors offering business printing outsourcing solutions have set up print centres which cater to offsite printing.

Are customers feeling confident about outsourcing their printing requirements?

More organisations are coming forward to outsource their printing needs. Vendors are ensuring that proper security parameters are in place in case a customer demands them. Vendors are also bullish about the potential of outsourced business printing and have plans to popularise this concept. They have now scaled up to handle lakhs of pages per day at their print centres.

Who is using business printing outsourcing in India?

Xerox, one of the major vendors in business printing outsourcing, has customers such as UTI Bank and the Karnataka High Court. It has helped the high court digitise its judgements and then print them. WeP Peripherals has customers such as Union Bank of India and Aviva Life Insurance.

— Abhinav Singh