Uncovering the enterprise output management opportunity

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The printing environment represents a huge cost drain for many enterprises, and many are now turning to managed print services (MPS) to reduce complexity, to lower costs - both financial and environmental - and to mitigate the security risks of an unmanaged print environment. While consolidation of office printing can lead to significant cost savings and productivity improvements, many organisations overlook the potential for further savings and efficiencies from their wider enterprise output - such as ERP, mainframe and legacy printing.

• Many enterprises operate a complex and heterogeneous output environment to distribute, manage and deliver information
  Today's global business environment relies on fast, reliable and secure delivery of information across a variety of destinations, including printers, fax servers, email, the web and mobile devices. This information is generated by diverse applications on multiple platforms making it difficult for businesses to route, manage and assure delivery of printed and electronic output to the required destinations. This lack of control can lead to high operating costs, poor customer service and poor visibility of enterprise output costs.
• The office print environment can be a huge cost drain, which many organisations are now tackling through managed print services (MPS)
  Many organisations have little or no visibility of print costs due to fragmented ownership, device sprawl and a lack of centralised print management tools. MPS enables organisations to gain better visibility of office print costs and, through centralised management, proactive support and continuous improvement, businesses can reduce costs and improve productivity and business continuity. However, office MPS often addresses only desktop, Windows-generated output.
• While MPS is an effective way of managing office printing costs, it does not address the management of mission-critical enterprise output
  Many enterprises depend on business-critical output from legacy and enterprise applications (such as ERP and CRM), yet all too often the delivery of documents such as insurance policies, statements, invoices, shipping manifests or barcode labels is managed in silos without any centralised control. This leads to poor device utilisation and bottlenecks which can result in fragmented data collection and accounting.
• A holistic approach to enterprise output management (EOM) brings greater visibility and control to both office and enterprise output. With centralised EOM, organisations can benefit from a single point of control for all output, efficient resource management and a single source of accounting. EOM ensures confirmed delivery of business-critical information and that documents are provided in the required format to various destination types, such as print, fax, email, FTP, or the web. Through a software solution independent of platform, application, hardware and device, EOM enables controlled, multi-site distribution and routing for workload balancing and error recovery of documents throughout the enterprise.
• Evaluating enterprise output management is the next critical step for organisations that are using MPS. Cost savings and business efficiencies do not stop with office MPS. By extending MPS beyond the office to the wider enterprise, organisations can reduce IT costs, improve document security and cut paper and energy usage. Reduced energy and paper consumption is achieved through better utilisation of existing devices and by identifying hard copy print that could be substituted or eliminated. IT costs are lowered through simplified administration and management while centralised EOM security features assure appropriate access and seamless control of enterprise-wide output.

Conclusion
While tackling office printing is the first step to bringing print costs under control, this overlooks the vital part enterprise application output contributes to an organisation's overall costs and efficiencies. Those organisations that rely on business-critical output should look to EOM to uncover hidden opportunities for reducing print expenses by utilising more effective alternative electronic output channels. A holistic EOM strategy provides a single vendor management solution for a multivendor environment, enabling an organisation to centrally control and manage all enterprise output, irrespective of its format or destination, leading to both cost savings and improved business process efficiencies.