Print Management Software

Is one department racking up the majority of your print costs? Is it because they’re not using the best equipment for their needs, or is it because they have wasteful print habits? Or…is one employee using up lots of expensive color cartridges for their four-year-old’s surprise party? 

There’s one surefire way to know, and that’s investing in cutting-edge print software…

What Is Print Management?

Print management is a broad term that includes any tools and tasks that optimize your printing devices’ performance or their use. Some examples of print management include making sure devices are maintained regularly, right-sizing your fleet, and using special print management software. 

What Is Print Management Software?

Print management software is a powerful tool that helps businesses streamline, monitor, and track their printing.

Depending on the software, your organization can use it to: 

• Allow employees to print to any of your devices from anywhere 
• Require user authentication before releasing a print job 
• Monitor ink and toner levels
• Route certain print jobs to the most appropriate equipment 
• Apply default settings to save money
• Collect details on who’s printing what 
• Monitor and track any and all print jobs 
• Allow colleagues visiting from other locations to easily identify nearby printers
• Eliminate print servers
• Automate and digitize documents

The 5 Incredible Benefits of Print Management Software

1. Understand How Your Equipment Is Being Used

With print management software, you’ll be able to gain an incredible amount of insight into who’s printing what and when, so you can make well-informed decisions. Maybe your staff’s printing needs have changed in the past few years, and you could save some money by eliminating a device or two. Maybe they’re printing high volumes of black and white documents on the machine that uses the most expensive ink because it’s closer. You don’t know until you know. And if your fleet is complex, what you don’t know is probably a lot. 

2. Simplify Management

Print management software allows you to manage all printers and print jobs from a central dashboard, rather than having to configure each printer individually. That means your IT staff can quickly update printer drivers and apply patches from a central location. 

3. Increase Security 

Print security isn’t a new problem, but it’s come to mean something much different in the past 10 years. Without print management software, it’s always been pretty easy for a well-intentioned staff member to print something out and forget about it. Sensitive information left in a print tray is a frightfully common print security issue.  

But once printers became networked smart devices, they got many of the same vulnerabilities as a laptop or a tablet. Not only can hackers steal information from unsecured printing devices, but they can also launch more sophisticated cyberattacks throughout your network, including ransomware. In fact, not too long ago, that’s exactly what happened to a hospital that didn’t prioritize modern print security. 

Print management software is just one component of proper print security; among other security features, this software can help you set up secure (a.k.a. pull or follow me) printing, which requires users to authenticate themselves (with a badge or a PIN) at the device before it releases a print job. 

4. Save Trees and Save Money

Secure printing doesn’t just improve print security. It also helps dramatically reduce wasteful print habits when all print jobs are tracked, and users have to travel to a central printer to pick up a print job. People tend to ask themselves whether it’s actually worth it before hitting print, and the answer is often no! 

Print management software also makes frugal printing habits simple. Sure, you can always ask staff to only print in black and white and use both sides of the page, but when those choices require a few additional steps each time, it’s an easy request to forget or ignore. This software, on the other hand, allows you to apply default settings that reduce waste and print costs across your entire organization. Your staff will still be able to produce single-sided documents in full color, but that’s no longer the easiest option. 

However, if you want to really rein in some wasteful habits, you can also impose quotas and print restrictions on a particular department or throughout your organization.  

5. Improve Productivity

Toner and ink monitoring may seem like a small detail, but it allows you to automate supply ordering, so your staff won’t have to figure out what supplies are needed and when for each device. You won’t have to waste space with excess ink and toner cartridges, you’ll reduce procurement errors, and toner pirates will no longer have an easy way to scam your organization.

Specific Benefits of Papercut

When it comes to print management software, you have choices. We often recommend PapercutMF for clients who want to manage their own print environments because it’s incredibly powerful and incredibly user-friendly: 

• It’s easy to install and use
• It’s feature-rich and updated regularly
• It’s BYOD friendly
• It doesn’t require expensive third-party add-ons
• It works on all brands of multifunction devices (MFDs)
• The licensing is very simple 
• It’s easy to set up pay-per-print usage for public spaces 
• It offers advanced reporting in multiple formats — like Excel and HTML — that can be automated 
• It offers cross-platform support for servers and clients

Papercut in Action

Just last May, our print experts participated in a webinar to show how Papercut’s Print Deploy feature simplifies print queue and driver management. We love a good webinar, and we try to provide them often. But we also understand that sometimes it’s nice to watch them after the fact so you can skip around and take breaks without missing anything. 

Click the link below to get the full webinar and watch it your way!