Managing information costs and reducing waste are two of the challenges facing printer users today. Most sites soon notice that print costs are escalating out of control. This is where we come in.
Since print management dramatically helps reduce the number of pages printed or copies taken or waste paper that gets thrown into the recycle bin, it can make a huge difference on the amount of paper waste. So you can feel warm inside knowing you are doing your bit to save some trees and cut down on carbon dioxide emissions. Another environment and money saving feature is ‘find-me printing’ which cuts down on the number of printers and MFD’s reducing costs for toner and paper and saving on the electricity bill. So what exactly isn’t there to like about print management?
The money saving aspect of print management should make it easy to convince the people that control the purse strings they are making the right choice. Most sites we talk to (even those running external hardware units) easily make their money back in the first year (some even make a profit!!!).
So now you know it’s good to save money and save the environment at the same time but how are you going to implement this? One of the most effective ways to reduce these print costs and improve the productivity of your network printers is to use PaperCut MF.
PaperCut MF is a solid software solution that allows you to easily manage your print assets, to collect usage data by location and device, to identify any waste and simply implement cost recovery and allocation strategies, to maximise your system productivity and that all-important return on investment.
Below are 10 great reasons to get in touch and get setup with a trial of PaperCut.
1: “FindMe” Release Anywhere Printing (Pull Printing to you and me)
Simply put, documents follow users to their printer of choice. Allow your users print to a PaperCut MF “Virtual Print Queue” and regardless of their location they’ll be able to retrieve their print jobs from a networked printer or MFD. This delivers tremendous flexibility when and where needed.
2: Go Green!
Hundreds of report combinations to view, export as file or deliver via email and real-time statistics on CO2, energy and trees consumed by the printing process. PaperCut MF reporting and print controls empower IT departments to control waste. In particular, CO2 and Carbon emission reporting is available at a glance with a handy optional widget or report. The employment of green initiatives is a growing requirement in today’s world.
3: Easy to Manage
An intuitive interfaces make PaperCut easy to administer and easy to use. Regarded as the simplest system of its type to deploy and manage, PaperCut MF delivers. For instance, System Administrators have full access to advanced administration and configuration options via a familiar, simple web interface. This can be accessed anywhere and anytime on your network. Early in 2011 expect a new layout for the UI giving you all the information you need at a glance. PaperCut MF is up to date in both its looks and its architecture.
4: Site Wide Policy Enforcement
Take control of your paper, MFD and Toner usage. With PaperCut MF you can take charge and control “who” prints, “what” gets printed and to “where”. There are even some simple scripting controls available to ensure your staff automatically adhere to the agreed company print policies. These include “duplex print”, “no colour from web” and “job routed to least cost device” as well as “Free printing during class time” – very handy for exam time at school. If none of the pre-made scripts suit you, then you can of course define your own features with a custom advanced printer script.
5: Centralised Administration
Administer the system straight from your web browser anywhere on the network. PaperCut MF provides administration access from any location on your network via a standard web browser. End-Users also have access to a set of web tools that empower students and staff to track and monitor their own activities in real time as well as various tools and log information.
6: Driverless Printing
A driver-less printing solution for laptops and wireless devices. A simple yet very affective feature called “Web Print” allows printing from net-books and other mobile devices. Perfect for “mobile workers” and students with their own laptops with documents they need to be printed. Simply upload the document, select the device on the floor plan and print. Also (but nothing official just yet) iPhone/iPad printing could be on its way soon. We will update the website as soon as we get confirmation. We know a lot of sites handing out iPads these days will be interested in this feature.
7: Scalability
The modern software design and architecture provides scalability for networks of all sizes. Whether your network consists of a single server with a handful of users to a clustered multi server network with 60,000 plus users, PaperCut MF will scale to meet your needs without any troubles. PaperCut is happy to run on Windows, Mac, Linux, Novell (iPrint) and mixed environments and is just as happy to live in a virtual machine.
8: Easy Deployment
It’s extremely easy to install and configure. Simply click next and follow the prompts. The PaperCut MF install process allows you to setup preferences for Users, User Groups, Devices, Cost and Quota’s. It could not be simpler.
9: Monitoring and Usage Reports
Hundreds of report combinations to view, export as file or deliver via email. With a vast choice of standard reports finding out who, where and how much is printed has now become whole lot easier and the best bit is, it will let you see who is causing all the trouble by printing 300 pages to a USB desk jet printer instead of a large MFD. PaperCut MF provides the tools to monitor the output of your printer and MFD fleet with real time activity reports that can be deployed silently so that staff gets used to the changes in workflow.
10: Secure Access and Release
Running around to retrieve confidential print jobs will be a thing of the past. No matter where you are, print jobs can be collected conveniently from any supported device with either secure user or card authentication.
We had to stop at 10…….but we could go on all day about:
- Dedicated Print release stations.
- Professional client billing – charge back those printing costs to clients.
- Sync across multiple user directories (e.g. a Microsoft Active Directory and a separate LDAP server).
- Shared accounts – charge printing to accounts/departments that can be shared by multiple users.
- Watermarking – apply text to the bottom of each page.
- A bunch of Public APIs to link into.
- Supports Microsoft SQL Server (32 and 64-bit, and Server Express), Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL out-of-the-box on all platforms.
- Credit card payments and top up cards to add value to accounts.
And best of all – Capture “off the glass” walk-up copying using embedded software for the following platforms:
- Ricoh, via Ricoh Embedded Software Architecture (ESA)
- Sharp, via Sharp Open Systems Architecture (OSA)
- Xerox, via Xerox Network Accounting
- Lexmark, via Lexmark Embedded Solutions Framework (LeSF)
- Konica Minolta, via OpenAPI
- Kyocera Mita, via Kyocera Hybrid Platform for Advanced Solutions (HyPAS)
- HP, via Chai SOE DSE
- Toshiba
- Gestetner
- Lanier
- Nashuatec
- Triumph Adler
- Olivetti
- With more coming soon!
Interested? Then get in touch.
