5 Print Stats that are Terrifying for Any IT Budget

Managing print is laborious, straining your MSP’s resources and your client’s IT and office budgets.

Everybody likes to complain about printers. After all, they are big, expensive, complicated machines notorious for breaking down and causing last minute emergencies.

But how bad are printers, specifically? For this article, we wanted to put our money where our mouth is and find numbers to back up our claims about issues within the print industry.

At Print Partner, we serve as the trusted partner to MSPs across the country, supplementing your IT services with our parent company’s managed print services. We know how frustrating and expensive print service can be, and we’re here to prove it with some hard-hitting facts.

In this article, we’ll review five of the most alarming print statics we could find that are sure to send shivers down your technicians’ spines!

1.) IT Departments Spend 15% of Time on Printing Issues

Want your MSP’s technicians to spend their time on big, new, exciting projects? Tough luck.

An article from Marco reveals some startling statistics about the print industry:

“The average IT department spends 15% of its time responding to printing-related issues including, but not limited to, user assistance, software compatibility, and network connectivity.”

The amount of time and effort print issues waste for IT departments is one of the most commonly-cited reasons why MSPs hate print. Printers and copiers not only eat up tons of time, but they are also often fruitless endeavors.

To read more about how MSPs feel towards the print industry, read: 5 Reasons Why MSPs Hate Print

Unless your MSP charges by the hour, there is no money to be made from messing with print devices.

That’s why we recommend collaborating with a trustworthy MPS provider! When your clients have a print vendor to handle their copiers, it lifts a huge weight from your IT staff, so you can focus on actually important tasks like security and server maintenance.

2.) 45% of Printed Pages Are Trashed Within a Day

Think before you print!

Record Nations details several alarming print-related statistics in its 2021 study, How Much Paper is Used in One Day?

In this article, Author Morgan O’Mara lists one that will make any office manager’s head spin:

“45% of paper printed in offices ends up trashed by the end of the day.”

That’s nearly half! Considering most managed print vendors charge a fee per page printed, one shudders to think of how much money is wasted on printing pages that will only be used for a few hours and then trashed.

Not only is this tough on the office IT budget, but it’s also terrible for the environment. 

The article states that, according to the United States EPA, the world produces 300 million tons of paper every year. And despite being only 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. consumes 30% of the world’s paper.

And the icing on the cake? Not only are so many of these pages trashed, but many are never used.

Flipsnack estimates that up to 17% of printed pages are nothing more than dust collectors sent directly to the landfill.

It’s time for your clients to get a grip on what they print!

3.) MPS Can Reduce Print Spending by 20-30%

If your clients aren’t using managed print services, (MPS), they could be missing out on significant savings.

A study by the International Data Corporation reveals that companies that initiate MPS in their office space can create significant savings for their office budgets.

“By working with a managed print service (MPS) provider, significant cost reductions of 20% to 30% can be achieved in the total cost of printing,” reads the study.

The piece also details the following potential benefits from clients utilizing MPS:

• 25%-60% reduction in print-related hardware costs
• 30% reduction in energy consumption 
• 20% reduction in toner consumption
• 10%–15% reduction in wasted output through pull printing alone
• 7%–14% cost saving in print-related helpdesk calls

So if your client is stumped on how to save money and energy on their print, start with managed print services! Working with a quality vendor can help your clients get a grip on their printing infrastructures.

To learn more about how MPS can help your clients, read: Top 4 Benefits of Managed Print Services

4.) 64% of Small Businesses Can’t Track Print Costs

You may be surprised by how many of your clients fail to track their print-related spending.

Small Business Trends estimates that 64% of small businesses cannot track how much they spend on printing, nor can they track usage.

This can make initiating a print conversation challenging. How are vendors supposed to find savings for a client when they don’t know how much they spend, to begin with?

This is why the print assessment is a very powerful tool. This is when your client’s MPS provider thoroughly studies their entire print fleet, drafting a breakdown of their total cost of ownership (TCO).

To learn more about what a quality assessment looks like, read: What is a Print Assessment?

5.) 60% of Enterprises Suffer Print-Related Data Breaches

Print devices can be some of the easiest ways for malevolent hackers to steal sensitive information from your clients’ businesses.

In fact, a report from Quocirca estimates that 60% of enterprise businesses in the United Kingdom, United States, France, and Germany have suffered from security attacks related to their print fleets.

Data breaches concern companies of any size, with large enterprises being no exception.

Quocirca estimates that these breaches, on average, cost the victim companies over $400,000 each. Ouch.

To prevent this from happening to your clients, ensure that your MSP collaborates with them to secure all their print devices. Even a single forgotten copier can open the back door for hackers.

Leave no stone unturned!

To learn more about keeping your clients’ print devices secure, read: Top 10 Tips for Printer Security

Print Partner and Cleaning Up IT Budgets

Still hanging in there? We, too, were shocked and appalled by some of these statistics.

Unfortunately, many businesses do not prioritize their office’s printing needs. They overspend, overprint, and sometimes won’t even bother to track spending. 

And who gets the short end of the stick? Their MSPs, which often have to clean up the mess their clients leave behind.

That’s why Print Partner is here to help!

We know how annoying print can be for IT support teams. That’s why we do what we do!

Our goal is to take the burden of print off of your shoulders. When you refer clients to us, we handle all of their printing needs going forward, freeing up your team’s time to handle more critical tasks while improving the printing workflow for your clients.

Plus, we pay you! For each referral you send our way, we pay you at least $250 for the introduction, plus $1,000 per copier sold and 5% on their lifetime print allotment.

Create an additional revenue stream while making your job easier and helping your clients. Win, win, win.

So consider partnering with us, a Print Partner you can trust.