Do You Know the Total Cost of Operating Your Print Environment?

Contrary to popular belief, several of the processes involved in printing solutions can make you overspend by thousands of dollars, especially solutions that you wouldn’t have thought would make you waste so much of your budget. In fact, several costs can account for the Total Cost of Operation, or simply known as TCO in both enterprise-level and small-medium business expenses. What exactly does this mean for other businesses? It means that the TCO of the costs of printing, toner, and everything else involved with that particular process has multiple variables and all of those variables need to be considered within the budget in order to have better money management.

Categories of Cost
So, what exactly can you expect in the TCO for your business? There are several factors, although they are split up into two different, but simple, categories: tangible or “hard” costs and intangible or “soft” costs. This is especially true for web-to-print solutions that will automatically categorize different functions into tangible and intangible costs. However, this can also mean your budget is being used up quicker than it should be if you aren’t tracking it carefully. But, what is considered a hard cost and a soft cost for printing solutions?

• Tangible Costs: Printing, storing, shipping, finishing, and fulfillment.
• Intangible Costs: Scheduling, tracking, designing, composition, billing, editing, and project management.

Regardless, these are both very important categories of costs that need to be managed successfully and can be with the right kind of TCO strategy. But before you start focusing on those tangible costs, intangible costs can cost more in the long run than tangible costs, even for businesses within the printing and toner industry. This is because it can be challenging to figure out the exact expense that goes into intangible costs when they can be so differing between different industries and even between different printing machines. Also, they’re much more varied and used on a daily basis. So, what kind of strategy can be implemented with your TCO?

Total Cost of Operation Strategy
One way to build the right kind of TCO strategy is creating simple formulas for different kinds of costs and then multiplying them by days, minutes, hours and finally getting the annual costs. Some costs can be as much as over $50,000 per year, but TCO can help you bring down this cost and make sure your printing jobs and toner are working even more efficiently.

It doesn’t matter what kind of business you’re running, whether it is small or large, TCO is very important to consider for web-to-print solutions. If you’re utilizing print services on a daily basis and rely on them heavily, operation costs are doubly important and can be managed in a very real and inexpensive way with the help of a managed print services provider. Building up a strategy after truly laying out each of the major costs of each process part of your printing solutions can be one of the most important things you do for your business.

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Contrary to popular belief, several of the processes involved in printing solutions can make you overspend by thousands of dollars, especially solutions that you wouldn’t have thought would make you waste so much of your budget. In fact, several costs can account for the Total Cost of Operation, or simply known as TCO in both enterprise-level and small-medium business expenses. What exactly does this mean for other businesses? It means that the TCO of the costs of printing, toner, and everything else involved with that particular process has multiple variables and all of those variables need to be considered within the budget in order to have better money management.

Categories of Cost
So, what exactly can you expect in the TCO for your business? There are several factors, although they are split up into two different, but simple, categories: tangible or “hard” costs and intangible or “soft” costs. This is especially true for web-to-print solutions that will automatically categorize different functions into tangible and intangible costs. However, this can also mean your budget is being used up quicker than it should be if you aren’t tracking it carefully. But, what is considered a hard cost and a soft cost for printing solutions?

• Tangible Costs: Printing, storing, shipping, finishing, and fulfillment.
• Intangible Costs: Scheduling, tracking, designing, composition, billing, editing, and project management.

Regardless, these are both very important categories of costs that need to be managed successfully and can be with the right kind of TCO strategy. But before you start focusing on those tangible costs, intangible costs can cost more in the long run than tangible costs, even for businesses within the printing and toner industry. This is because it can be challenging to figure out the exact expense that goes into intangible costs when they can be so differing between different industries and even between different printing machines. Also, they’re much more varied and used on a daily basis. So, what kind of strategy can be implemented with your TCO?

Total Cost of Operation Strategy
One way to build the right kind of TCO strategy is creating simple formulas for different kinds of costs and then multiplying them by days, minutes, hours and finally getting the annual costs. Some costs can be as much as over $50,000 per year, but TCO can help you bring down this cost and make sure your printing jobs and toner are working even more efficiently.

It doesn’t matter what kind of business you’re running, whether it is small or large, TCO is very important to consider for web-to-print solutions. If you’re utilizing print services on a daily basis and rely on them heavily, operation costs are doubly important and can be managed in a very real and inexpensive way with the help of a managed print services provider. Building up a strategy after truly laying out each of the major costs of each process part of your printing solutions can be one of the most important things you do for your business.