Based on the questions we get when our clients are using 3manager for audits, we often get questions related to existing contracts, supplies and other elements making a replacement of printers a bit more complex than assumed.
We always recommend to make sure to have a clear overview of your current situation, so you have everything in place when discussing new solutions with your office printer account manager.
Here is some advice which is good to keep in mind when replacing printers:
1. Do you have any remaining supplies?
One of the things which are hard to manage but represents a lot of value is the remaining supplies in your printers.
If you are considering replacing printers, a supplies check is needed as those items represent a great value.
Imagine you have 15 color printers including 4 toners each with 50% left. One toner can easily cost 100 Euro. So using that example the value would be around 3000 Euro.
The big problem here is that even if it represents a value, its worthless for others to buy if they are used.
An easy option is to make sure the new printer is not connected before the old one runs dry and eventually spare toners have been used as well.
Have a talk with your account manager about how to do with existing toners to reduce the loss as much as possible.
Conclusion:
Make sure to create an overview of your current situation. Either by checking each device or by using tools like 3manager to scan your printers. The more devices you have the more time demanding it is.
Make sure to inform your account manager about this status so he/she has the option to include this in the delivery planning.
2. Be aware of existing service contracts
In some cases, if you have a service contract there can be terms that need to be terminated before you can replace the printer. The following are often typical scenario:
Termination needs to be done at least 3 months before the end date or it will be auto-prolonged for up to 12 months.
There is a minimum volume per month including supplies that you need to pay for a certain period
There are different prices committed depending on volumes. In this case, it's very important to track how many pages you are printing in order to understand the true cost of ownership.
In many cases, your account manager can help you with this overview as well and include the costs of these existing contracts in your new setup.
Conclusion:
Get an overview of all your contracts and "map" them to your printers so its easy to know which printers are on some kind of contracts. Then make sure they are terminated so you don't get any extra costs in a period, where you have to pay for new printers as well as old contracts.
The more contracts you have the more complex it can be to keep track of printing costs. We recommend using tools to manage your contracts. At 3manager one of our most used features is the contract management functionality which will help you create and maintain an overview of contractual obligations.
3. Monitor your printing behavior for a while before looking at new printers
What is your buying needs? The more printers you have the more difficult it is to know. In that case, your account manager will perform an audit, to understand your needs. However, if you already have a monitoring tool installed, there will be a lot of data which will help your account manager visualizing the new costs.
This is where data-driven tools are very handy as a client as well reseller is using the same data and its a lot easier to understand "what, why and when" faster.
Conclusion:
Start tracking your printing behaviour with data-driven tools which will make sure to keep you up to date always and the data can be re-used when buying new printers.
If you have any questions about how to monitor printers, contracts or other things related to this business, feel free to contact us.
Thanks for reading,
The 3manager team