Reducing printing costs starts with understanding what’s really driving them. This blog explains how a print assessment gives you a complete view of your print environment highlighting inefficiencies, uncovering hidden waste, and providing a clear path to lower costs.
What Is a Print Assessment?
A print assessment or print audit is a complete analysis of an organization's print environment that evaluates printer usage, device performance, printing costs, security risks, and workflow inefficiencies.
Print audits give companies insight into where they can save money and optimize their fleets.
If you want to reduce printing costs effectively, the first step is a print assessment. It looks at usage, fleet efficiency, patterns, outdated technology, security vulnerabilities and more all for free.
Why Are Businesses Overspending on Print?
Businesses often overspend on printing because they lack visibility into print usage, device performance, supply costs, and inefficient printing behaviors.
1. Fragmented Print Spend Across Your Entire Fleet
Printing costs are spread across leases, toner, maintenance, and service agreements and sometimes are managed by different teams. Without a unified view, it’s nearly impossible to understand your true total spend. Consolidating your print environment with a single, reliable provider can simplify billing and make management much easier.
2. Assumed Usage Without Real Data
Most organizations believe their printing is under control, but lack visibility into who is printing, how often, and if your print fleet is correctly sized to your usage patterns leads to hidden inefficiencies and unnecessary costs.
3. No Visibility Across the Full Print Environment
With a mix of network printers, desktop devices, and multifunction systems, usage data is scattered and inconsistent making it difficult to track activity, identify waste, or make informed decisions.
What Metrics are Analyzed in a Print Audit?
1. Hidden Waste Costs
Print audits identify unnecessary printing activity that increases costs without providing business value.
- Unclaimed print jobs
- Excessive color printing
- Documents that could be shared digitally instead
2. Overages and Usage Patterns
Print audits reveal usage trends that may be driving unnecessary printing costs.
Assessments often reveal unexpected usage trends:
- Certain departments printing far more than others
- High-volume users driving a disproportionate share of costs
- Monthly spikes that go unexplained
- Low usage that doesn’t justify the cost
With the right data, you can focus on high-impact changes, right-sizing your fleet, reduce overage printing costs, and bring color printing costs under control.
3. Aging and Inefficient Devices
Print audits identify printers and copiers that are increasing costs due to age, inefficiency, or poor placement. Older devices often:
- Have higher cost per page
- Require more maintenance
- Be poorly matched to current workloads
A print assessment identifies which devices are costing you the most and where improvements can be made. Most businesses discover that outdated devices are adding hundreds in extra costs each month, and upgrading can actually help save money.
How Does a Print Assessment Improve Security?
A print assessment improves security by identifying vulnerabilities, outdated devices, and risky printing devices that may expose sensitive information.
Common risks include:
- Sensitive documents left unattended
- Lack of accountability for print jobs
- No secure printing practices
- Older printers often stop receiving security updates, leaving them vulnerable to known threats
Improving visibility helps reduce these risks and helps your company stay secure, while also improving cost control.
How Does a Print Assessment Improve Financial Visibility?
A print assessment provides a complete picture of printing costs across departments, devices, users, and contracts.
Rather than relying on estimates, organizations gain accurate insight into:
- True cost per page
- Total print spend
- Costs by department, device, or user
- Overage costs
Print assessments reduce your printing costs and can find where better more efficient printers can decrease your price and right size your fleet.
Can a Print Assessment Recommend Better Equipment?
A print assessment evaluates your current devices and recommends equipment that better aligns with your print volume, business requirements, and cost goals.
Many organizations continue using devices that are outdated, inefficient, or oversized for their actual needs. A print assessment helps determine:
- Which devices should be replaced
- Which devices are underutilized
- Where consolidation opportunities exist
- What equipment would improve efficiency and lower operating costs
The result is a right-sized print environment designed to reduce costs, improve productivity, and support future business growth.
What Happens During a Print Assessment?
A print assessment evaluates your devices, print volumes, user behavior, security risks, and total printing costs to identify opportunities for optimization. Most print assessments include:
- Printer and copier inventory
- Print volume analysis
- Device utilization review
- Cost analysis
- Security assessment
- Equipment recommendations
- Optimization roadmap
This gives decision makers a complete understanding of their current print environment before making changes.
What is the Easiest Way to Understand Print Costs?
A print audit is the easiest way to understand print costs.
A print assessment simplifies the process by:
- Bringing all your data together
- Highlighting inefficiencies
- Providing clear, actionable insights
Instead of guessing, you get a clear view of what’s happening across your environment, where you can save, and how to optimize your device setup. And with many providers offering print assessments for free, there’s no risk, only valuable insights to gain.
Usherwood provides free print assessments to give you the visibility you need to reduce printing costs. Ready to uncover savings? Fill out the tech evaluation below and schedule your assessment today.
