Handling printer toner and supplies might seem like a small piece of managing a printer fleet. But for organizations with printers at multiple facilities, wrangling printer toner and supplies can feel like herding cats—chaotic and unpredictable.
Partner with your Managed Print Services (MPS) provider to include just-in-time (JIT) toner replacement. This can help your business to simplify your supply chain, cut down on waste, and make sure your printers are always ready to support your team, leading to a more productive and cost-effective business environment.
Let’s learn more about these savvy strategies:
“We really appreciate the professional and efficient implementation we experience with GFC, and feel they went above and beyond expectations. It was an uneventful installation, which is the best possible thing you can say about any installation of new technology.”
— Rick Sauer, Director of Financial Services, Sauk Prairie Healthcare
If you have a fleet of printers, an MPS provider can use print monitoring software to send the correct make, model and toner color just when they are needed. A replacement toner cartridge will be sent directly to the contact person at the facility where the printer is located. This JIT inventory strategy makes sure that no excess toner is being purchased and your print fleet has replacement toner cartridges when and where they are needed. No more and no less.
An MPS provider can install software that can be programmed to either send a notification to your print administrator or automatically order a new cartridge, when toner is reduced down to a low setpoint. For many businesses, this is often calculated as enough toner to last for 20 days, based on previous printing habits.
Toner cartridges are delivered according to the specifications and needs of each model. JIT toner delivery alleviates the burden on your internal IT team and ensures that your printers are always ready to go, without stress or guesswork.
A JIT strategy means that instead of having piles of toner around the office for your IT team to track and inventory, your toner cartridges are managed through a local service and distribution center and delivered directly to you, as needed. You will not need to store or manage an inventory of your own, reducing printer-related headaches for your IT team. Trust me, they’ll thank you for taking this task off of their plate.
Consider the case of one of our customers, Sauk Prairie Healthcare. This fast-growing healthcare company has been able to eliminate its stockpile of toner and supplies thanks to JIT toner delivery. The result was an elimination of a 4-foot by 4-foot stockpile of old toner cartridges that had been taking up space at the company's headquarters.
Gordon Flesch Company (GFC) analysts helped eliminate unnecessary printing devices and standardize with select models of copiers and printers.
Additionally, the organization adopted GFC’s JIT delivery system. This allowed Sauk Prairie Healthcare to eliminate stockpiled supplies and receive toner just as the machines need it.
The implementation process was simple, and with GFC managing their printer and copier fleet, their IT team now is able to concentrate on key projects, instead of printer hassles.
The bottom line is that printing inefficiencies waste time and money. Your staff may be printing to devices which aren’t best suited to their needs. If a device is down, staff may send a print job to it without realizing, then must go back and forth between the printer and their computer to figure out what went wrong. And when someone prints a document and it comes out wrong, paper and toner are wasted!
At Gordon Flesch Company, Managed Print is more than just printer service. Our imageCARE+ service program takes a modern, holistic approach to managing print technology and workflows. Contact us today for a free printer assessment to find out if your company would benefit from imageCARE+ Managed Print Services.
