3 Common Printing Issues Among Businesses and the Solutions

At the end of the day, printing issues equal printing costs. Every time IT is called to reboot a crashed print server or install a new printer, it takes their attention off bigger things. That amounts to lost productivity for them as well as the end users who aren’t able to print.

That lost productivity shouldn’t be underestimated. Research from IDC has indicated that IT staff spend 15% of their time dealing with print-related issues. And helpdesk calls? Nearly a quarter of them (23%) involve problems with printing. [link] Think about how much time and money could be saved if those percentages dropped by half. Or even more.

Yet it’s easy for companies to overlook these soft costs of enterprise print management. Budgets usually take things like hardware purchasing, maintenance and consumables into account. But what’s often missing is the amount your company is wasting on every single support call to remedy common printing issues.

Fortunately, there’s no rule that says you have to keep pouring the same resources into printing. Using the right print management solution, you can print for less. To see how, here’s a brief look at three of the most common printing issues and ways to avoid them.

1. Outdated Print Drivers and Software

Print servers have never really been an ideal print management solution. They’re single points of failure and hard to configure. Now that we’re well into the mobile era, they’re really starting to show their age. Compatibility issues and limited support for mobile devices are a constant problem.

Not that traditional desktops were much easier. Just look at driver management. It can be difficult to roll out—and undo—driver updates. It’s also tough to stay on top of which drivers need to remain at a certain version for compatibility reasons.

The solution: PrinterLogic’s serverless printing software enables admins to centrally manage printer objects as well as profile settings from a single pane of glass—even if your organization is highly distributed. The consolidated repository also simplifies driver management. You can easily configure automatic driver installations, updates and rollbacks.

As I wrote above, printing problems end up squandering time and resources. And while it’s easy to think of a swamped helpdesk as a problem in its own right, it’s actually a sign of a fundamental flaw with conventional enterprise print management.

Let’s start with the end user who can’t print. They tried to install their own printer, but GPO weirdness prevented it from getting deployed properly. The user then has to take time to call the helpdesk, where a ticket is created. The admin responsible has a hundred other fires to put out, but they have to get printing back online for this end user, who’s growing angrier by the second.

This is a very common printing issue, and it leads to an antagonistic relationship between end users and IT. It’s a never-ending cycle that companies need to break. But they can’t do that with standard print management solutions.

The solution: The answer isn’t to take functionality away from your end users. Empower them instead. PrinterLogic offers a native self-service printer installation portal that enables end users to easily find and install their own printers. They simply visit the web-based portal in their browser, choose their printer from a floor plan map, and install it with a single click. No helpdesk call needed.

Unlike print server solutions, PrinterLogic doesn’t rely on GPOs or scripts, either. That means you can configure advanced automatic deployments that you and your end users can count on.

No matter how you’ve got your print servers set up, they suffer from serious shortcomings. If they’re consolidated, remote sites constantly depend on a fast, stable WAN connection for their printing. If they’re distributed, they add more infrastructure and are harder to manage. All of those things lead to more costs.

On top of that, there’s a lack of control and oversight. End users change their printer settings for one job and end up printing everything in color after that. Or they send the job to the wrong printer without realizing, so they print it again and again.

The solution: Because PrinterLogic’s software creates a serverless printing infrastructure, you can eliminate print servers completely—along with all their hassle and costs. Features like secure release printing help to keep sensitive jobs safe while also reducing the likelihood of stray print jobs. And admins can enforce advanced default settings, so printer profiles always revert back to black and white.

And how do you know that a user is hung up on color printing? Built-in advanced reporting from PrinterLogic lets you track print jobs and trends down to the user level. You can easily spot anomalies and tie printer usage to real-world costs.

Start Reclaiming Your Time and Money

By solving the root causes of common printing issues, PrinterLogic allows you to print for less. It makes printing more reliable and print management more efficient than you could ever hope to achieve using print server solutions. 

That’s exactly what leading law firm Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLC experienced (read the case study here). In addition to reducing the firm’s print infrastructure, our serverless printing software simplified every aspect of their print environment. Escalated print-related support tickets dropped to zero. They saved 10+ hours per week on frontend print management. 

Ready to see the same in your organization? Start your trial today and test PrinterLogic completely free of charge for 30 days.