Research reveals benefits of centralised printing

By Rodney Appleyard

Fragmented internal printing systems could be a thing of the past thanks to a whitepaper, which suggests that centralised printing can make it easier for organisations to share information that is essential to their daily business.

The results of the investigation are intended to benefit senior managers from Universities, encompassing distance education service providers; all types of training organisations, including TAFE colleges; large corporates; government departments, including local government and hospitals.

The findings are based on interviews with members of the National In-Plant Print and Publishing Association in Australia and New Zealand.

In-plant print and copy operations are resourced with equipment usually leased or owned by a host organisation.

Steve Brown, the market segment manager for production & graphic arts at Canon, talked about how organisations need to make sure that they manage documentation in a way that makes it more accessible for different departments: "The document is very important to the whole company, so whether it is printed, or stored electronically, the knowledge needs to be translated adequately, regardless of the standards or format.

"Organisations have a real opportunity to move the actual the documents into an area where they can be managed by the whole organisation. Once you do that, it will be the same as a filing cabinet. You will have everything you need to know about the customers just by going to that filing cabinet."

He said that the problem is that most companies think about managing documents in their individual area, but not in terms of the whole organisation. So solutions are found in each department, such as marketing, finance and human resources, but those departments can't access this information for printing from each other.

"If I was looking for a snapshot of a customer, I would need to run around the organisations and visit the finance, sales and manufacturing departments, for instance, to get all of the information I need about the customers. Think of the time I have to waste doing that, and you've got very highly skilled people running around organisations doing that everyday."

Richard Vines, the author of the whitepaper titled: "An analysis of the effectiveness and value of having a centralised print/copy facility within an organisation" added:

"The convergence of communications disciplines such as digital printing, web content management and forms and information management is creating new opportunities for in-plants (departments with internal printing facilities).

"Artificially separating an in-plant from the rest of an organisation's communications infrastructure and then asking 'is it part of our core business?' no longer provides useful answers, as integrating communication disciplines including digital printing has the potential to transform the way an organisation conducts its business."

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