Pharos Systems’ Ron Carson outlines key features and opportunities in print cost recovery and management systems, highlighting his company’s philosophy to “optimize print wherever it happens.”

In addition to the obvious savings print management solutions offer in paper and consumables, he highlights other areas including infrastructure and service contract savings. By enabling users to obtain prints from other nearby machines when one machine goes down, campuses can comfortably reduce the turnaround times for repair work in their service contracts and save money.

In terms of printer infrastructure, a campus won’t need 11×17 capability on all machines as users can be directed to specific locations to release a print job when this oversize printing is required. This too can provide significant savings.

He describes three areas of print to be controlled on a campus:

• Student, faculty and staff printing
• Internal print shops
• Externally procured print.

“The savings we can generate in externally procured print will more than offset the investment you need in the other two areas,” says Carson.

Finally, Carson describes how institutions with established cost recovery programs can take the solution campus-wide by adding chargeback capabilities and allocating fees to individual departments and grants.