Why Pull Printing Will Increase Security and Save Money for Your Company

Increased security comes with added costs, right?

Not necessarily. By implementing pull printing through PrinterLogic, you can actually end up saving money while boosting the security of your print environment.

Part of that comes down to pull printing itself. But the real cost savings start to add up when it’s combined with our serverless printing infrastructure. Unlike legacy printing solutions, PrinterLogic eliminates print servers and brings greater ease of use.

The average employee prints 34 pages per day. Yet estimates predict that five of those pages (14%) will never get picked up from the printer—whether it’s due to forgetfulness, distraction or the end user simply changing their mind after printing.

Over the long term, those printing habits take their toll. A study by the Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance found that the average office worker uses nearly 10,000 sheets, or about two cases, of printer paper each year. Depending on your printing solution, that amounts to about 1,400 wasted pages.

If you calculate an average price of $40 per case, you’re now looking at $11 of annual paper waste per employee. That might not sound like much. But when you factor in print consumables and services like ink, toner, storage, disposal and recycling, the costs see a hefty jump.

Now multiply that by every employee in the company. In an enterprise organization, that could easily be on the scale of $100,000 in printing waste alone each year.

Some organizations turn to managed print services to get to grips with this unnecessary spending. But pull printing with PrinterLogic can be a more effective tool. So, besides eliminating print servers, how exactly does PrinterLogic tackle those ongoing costs?

Pull printing splits the printing process into two steps. In the first step, nothing changes. The end user clicks “Print” as usual. But the print job is temporarily held until the user releases that print job to a specific printer.

With PrinterLogic, they can perform that release through our control panel application, our Print Release App or even a tablet set up near the printer in kiosk mode. It’s kind of like them saying, “Okay, I definitely want that, and I want to pick it up here.”

By making routine printing more intentional, pull printing cuts down on abandoned print jobs. Along with all their attendant costs.

When employees print a document and then fail to retrieve it from the printer, it’s not just wasting money. It also runs the risk of exposing confidential information.

Exposure of sensitive information can have serious financial consequences. A 2019 study on print security found that individual data breaches were reported to have cost organizations $400,000 per incident on average.

Pull printing adds security through the exact same process as it uses to reduce waste. That deliberate second step helps to ensure that end users are physically present at a printer and prepared to pick up their completed jobs. There’s less chance of those confidential documents left sitting unattended in the output tray.

For an extra layer of security, the release step can involve authentication. That’s called secure release printing, which PrinterLogic also supports through multiple authentication methods.

PrinterLogic’s ability to eliminate print servers while providing added functionality has made it a printing solution of choice among providers of managed print services.

Our cloud solution, PrinterLogic SaaS, has enabled MSPs like Ireland’s Independent Photocopier Services (IPS) to provide their customers with pull printing and other cost-saving features. Read the case study here.

Another managed print services provider did the same for its healthcare customers. Using PrinterLogic in a Citrix environment, EPIC Management was able to roll out reliable, easy-to-use secure release printing to busy medical staff. Read that case study here.

But don’t assume that PrinterLogic’s benefits are limited to organizations that make use of managed print services. Just take a second or two and sign up for a free PrinterLogic demo. For the next 30 days, you’ll have the opportunity to see exactly how pull printing and PrinterLogic’s serverless printing infrastructure can increase security and save money for your company.