Whitepapers

What’s the difference between color and black-and-white printing? It may seem like a simple question on the surface. But when it comes to everyday office printing, there are more differences between the two than you may realize—in cost, technology, functionality and other factors—and more similarities, too. If you’re thinking about incorporating more color into your office printing environment, you need to understand all these differences and similarities in order to make effective (not to mention cost-effective) choices.

“To put color print pricing in context, in 1994 a typical departmental-sized black-and-white laser printer would cost you around $5000 with a per-page price of about 8 or 9 cents. For less than that cost today, you can have a high-quality color printer. The idea that color is too expensive for in-house, everyday use is as antiquated as that 1994 black-and-white laser printer.”

–Don Jones, The Definitive Guide to Office Color Printing

Color printing has been around for years, but until recently, it was not that widely used in everyday office environments. According to industry observers at CAP Ventures, this may be because color printers have traditionally been perceived as too expensive and complex to be of much value for everyday usage.1 However, now that color devices are becoming more affordable and functional, that’s changing.

In today’s business world the ROI of any project is important as competition increases, it is imperative that a company make sure investments generate a large enough return. Increasing business efficiency is the most compelling reason for investing money in any project. Obviously technology has helped many businesses over the last 10-15 years become more efficient. Just replacing typewriters with word processors and calculators with spreadsheets initiated a huge increase in productivity per employee. Taking the next step is more challenging than simply replacing one tool for another as these programs were basically point solutions. It was predicted as early as 1975 that the “paperless office had arrived”. Obviously progress has been made toward this goal, but the amount of paperwork necessary to run a business (particularly a regulated one such as financial services and medical clinics) has increased a great deal since 1975. Just to maintain the status quo requires businesses to move to the next level in office productivity and implement a complete document management solution.

The reality is that the paperless office has not yet arrived, and it probably won’t anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean you can’t improve the way you share, edit, print, store and retrieve documents. This planner is designed to help you understand how to use digital send technology to improve productivity, enhance competitiveness and reduce costs by streamlining the way you digitize and share documents.