Lower your business’ costs and begin printing your marketing materials in house.

Customize your marketing materials and take advantage of on-demand printing. This will eliminate the need for expensive bulk orders of generic brochures and the unnecessary waste of replacing obsolete brochures.

Consider creating a Marketing library that will enable your sales and marketing employees to access marketing documents from a network folder. They will be able to open, revise and print the materials according the specific client you are working with.

Review these suggestions and make your in-house marketing materials more effective.

· Be sure to use a cost-effective color printer or multifunctional copier. Some systems can allow 20-page documents to be printed in less than one minute. continue reading...

My last couple blogs have been about the unseen costs of printing and the benefits of color. So how can you responsibly incorporate color printing into your business plan without running up costs?

1. Reduce Use of Ink Jet Printers

Inexpensive to purchase, inkjet printers are actually the most expensive color output devices to operate. This goes hand-in-hand with office supply stores advertisements focusing on their high profit ink jet cartridges. While convenient for small home office print jobs, ink jet printers become inefficient, slow and costly when running lengthy full color documents.

2. Cut back on Unnecessary Background Color

Documents with solid color backgrounds use significantly more toner and increase the cost of printing. Instead, use bright colors on a white background. Your handouts will be easier to read and look more professional. continue reading...

By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY

With sales of printers and copiers slumping and businesses looking for new ways to save money, Xerox Corp. and its rivals are changing their sales pitch.

For decades, Xerox and others built their businesses by pushing companies to buy more office machines and supplying pricey ink and toner. But increasingly these vendors are now advising big customers to reduce their number of machines and find ways to cut printing costs.

"That sounds like a strange way for a manufacturer to make money," concedes Stephen Cronin, president of Xerox's global-services business.

Xerox, Hewlett-Packard Co. and others say they are seeing strong demand for consulting services that show companies how to eliminate desktop printers and force workers to share multifunction devices that copy, print and fax. The vendors say such moves can reduce printing costs up to 30%.

Associated Press

Xerox's services business reached $3.5 billion in sales last year.

The printing companies want to entice clients to sign up for exclusive contracts, allowing them to replace machines made by rivals and thus provide all printing supplies. In some cases, clients let a single supplier manage the whole system for a monthly fee.

The business, known as managed-print services, is "all about controlling the fleet" of document-producing machines, says Ed Crowley, president of Photizo Group in Lexington, Ky., which tracks the print-consulting market. He estimates revenue from managed-print services will jump 36% this year to $15.7 billion. continue reading...

from Xerox

If you work in an office, chances are you don’t change the copier or printer cartridge because it’s too messy or you just don’t know how to do it. That’s according to a new Zogby survey, commissioned by Xerox, of more than 2,000 office workers across the U.S. aimed to better understand some of the reasons behind office printing habits.

Of those surveyed, more than 1,000 respondents said they have experienced a mess when changing a printer/copier toner cartridge.

The mess, plus a lack of knowledge on how to change a printer cartridge, is why more than 10 percent of respondents typically put off printing until someone else changes the toner cartridges. continue reading...