TLDR
The true cost of enterprise printing includes far more than supplies. Organizations also pay for IT support, hardware maintenance, compliance risks, security gaps, energy usage, and lost productivity. By adopting a cloud print management solution like Pharos, enterprises gain visibility into print behavior, reduce expenses, and strengthen security.
When most enterprises think about printing expenses, they point to their monthly managed print services (MPS) invoices—often billed on a per-page basis for black-and-white and color printing. While these costs are easy to track, they only reveal part of the story.
Behind the MPS bill lies a much larger set of hidden expenses that quietly drain budgets: IT help desk time, hardware upkeep, compliance risks, security gaps, and lost employee productivity. For insurance, banking, healthcare, and other compliance-driven industries, these challenges can be even more costly.
By looking beyond the obvious line items and uncovering these hidden costs, enterprises can make smarter, more strategic decisions about modernizing their print infrastructure.
The Hidden Costs of Enterprise Printing
1. IT Support and Help Desk Tickets
Every time a printer malfunctions, employees turn to IT for support. Print-related tickets are among the most common help desk issues, consuming valuable IT time that could be spent on strategic initiatives like cloud migration or cybersecurity.
Example: An enterprise with 10,000 employees may generate thousands of print-related help desk tickets annually, costing not just in labor hours but also in project delays.
2. Hardware, Maintenance, and Vendor Contracts
Under a MPS agreement, the costs of service, supplies, and maintenance are bundled into a monthly per-page contract. While this model simplifies budgeting, it can also mask inefficiencies. Enterprises often pay for more devices, higher service levels, or larger page volumes than they actually need. Without clear utilization data, organizations continue footing the bill for underused printers and unnecessary capacity.
3. Security and Compliance Risks
Printed documents are an often-overlooked source of data exposure. Sensitive information left on a print tray can lead to compliance violations in industries like healthcare, banking, and government. Regulations such as HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI DSS require strict control of information—including what gets printed.
4. Energy Consumption and Sustainability
Modern print devices are far more energy efficient than they used to be. Most automatically enter low-power sleep modes and even learn usage patterns to conserve energy. In fact, features like Secure Release—which keep devices active and ready—can sometimes increase energy use. The bigger sustainability concern is paper waste. Unclaimed or unnecessary print jobs add up quickly, conflicting with corporate ESG goals and driving costs that extend beyond what’s visible in an MPS contract.
Quick Fact: Studies estimate that up to 30% of printed documents are never even picked up from the printer.
5. Employee Productivity and Opportunity Costs
Employees spend time walking to printers, waiting for documents, and troubleshooting issues. These micro-delays compound into significant productivity losses across large teams. In industries with client-facing roles, even small delays can impact service quality.
Beyond the Monthly Bill: The Real Costs of Printing
Traditional cost tracking looks at invoices from paper and toner suppliers. But this narrow view fails to capture the total cost of ownership (TCO) of enterprise printing. Without data-driven insights, organizations struggle to:
- Optimize device placement
- Identify underutilized printers
- Enforce security policies
- Predict and manage future spend
The real cost of enterprise printing is a combination of visible and hidden expenses, making it a strategic challenge for CIOs and CFOs alike.
How to Reduce the True Cost of Printing
Modern cloud-based print management platforms give enterprises visibility and control over printing behavior. Benefits include:
- Centralized management of devices and workflows across multiple sites
- Secure release printing, ensuring only authorized users retrieve documents
- Elimination of print servers, reducing hardware and IT overhead
- Analytics and reporting to uncover inefficiencies and cost-saving opportunities
- Improved employee experience, reducing downtime and frustration
- Support for sustainability goals, with features that minimize waste
Pharos: The Leader in Enterprise Print Management
Pharos has helped global enterprises reimagine their print infrastructure, reduce costs, and improve security for decades. By migrating print infrastructure to the cloud, Pharos eliminates the complexity of on-premise servers while giving organizations full visibility into usage.
Key advantages of Pharos:
- Proven expertise in large-scale enterprise deployments
- Secure and scalable cloud-based solutions
- Deep analytics to uncover savings opportunities
- Trusted by Fortune 500 organizations worldwide
Ready to uncover the true cost of your enterprise printing?
Explore Pharos print management solutions and see how you can save.
