Choosing the right printer for your business

There are many, many options out there and that is obviously a great thing – but it can make the process of choosing the best one for your business a little daunting! It’s not as simple as buying the first printer that fits your budget, and doing so could mean missing out on some useful features.

The dangers of long contracts on the balance sheet

More importantly, making the wrong decision could even have negative results for your business balance sheet, as some managed print contracts can prove very expensive and painful over 5 years. Over this time in this era of ever-improving technology, what was a new and state-of-the-art printer at the beginning of a 5 year contract may start to become a little clunky towards the end of that period.

The right printer for your business is therefore not only crucial to performance, productivity and efficiency, but to the bottom line!

So back to the main question – how to choose the right printer for your business.

Key questions to consider:

Functionality

  • How many employees do you have?
  • Do you need black and white or colour?
  • Do you need high quality printing for customer-facing documentation, or more basic quality for reviewing email drafts etc?
  • Paper size – A4, A3?
  • Will you need copying, scanning or fax facilities

Efficiency

While the price of the actual printer is an undoubted cost consideration, don’t forget to take into account the operational costs of the machine such as ink, paper, maintenance. The cheapest printer hardware price does not always factor in these operational costs – be sure to take total cost of ownership into account when budgeting for print.

Connectivity

Would it be of benefit to your workforce to be able to print directly from their mobile devices? The right print environment can make for huge productivity gains in this regard.

Security

In this era of unprecedented cyber security threats, GDPR and other regulation considerations, the need for strong security measures across your whole IT infrastructure, including print, has never been more prevalent. Some printers come with in-built ‘print release’ functionality which reduces the risk of stray documents being left laying around in error on a printer tray by ensuring a password is required in order to print sensitive documents.

So what printers suit your business best?

In this article, we’ve suggested some considerations that you’ll need to make when choosing your new printer. Even with these questions it may still be difficult to make that final decision, so here’s a few more things to take into account:

  • Everyone and every business uses a printer differently – there’s discrepancies between individuals and departments
  • A rough guide is that an small-to-medium sized organisation benefits from having one printer for every 7-10 people
  • Understand maintenance and running costs before entering into any long-term contracts

As Canon Authorised Partners, Complete IT Systems are able to offer you leading guidance on your organisation’s print environment to achieve best value for money, results and reliability.

Give us a call today on 01274 396 213 or email  to talk to one of our print specialist team.