I don’t get it.
The price of black ink contained in the ordinary ink cartridge costs in excess of $4,731.00 per gallon. Color ink is in excess of $7,000 per gallon. But we have people all over the United States rejoicing because the price of gas has dropped to less than $4.00 per gallon (even though last year it was less $3.00).
Hewlett Packard’s profits, according to their latest quarterly report, are up over 15% from last year. Output (printed pages and copies) is increasing at over 7% per year with all the growth in the areas of print.
Granted, not many firms are using ink cartridges but toner prices are not much better as compared to the other commodities.
In spite of these costs, most firms lack a comprehensive plan on how to manage their black & white and color output. They are over-equipped with their end users printing to the most expensive devices with over 50% of firms lacking a cost recovery strategy for their print.
To answer my original question – What is Output Management? It is creating a comprehensive, firmwide plan to produce printed output in the most economical way possible while not inconveniencing the end users. And what does it mean? From a financial point of view, a fifty percent (50%) reduction in your output costs.
Now let’s go get some of that profit back from Hewlett Packard.