Ask These 6 Questions Before You Deploy Your Next Printer

Printer Deployment Checklist: Ask These 6 Questions

Are you opening your next storefront location? Adding a brand new department to your growing business? Figuring out how your office staff will print can be an afterthought compared to other items on your expansion punch list, even though it can impact productivity. Below we’ll review some questions that will help you with your new office rollout.

1. What does my current printer setup look like?

Do you currently have an existing setup at another location or within another department? If so, a meeting with each department, whether it’s accounting, operations, marketing, or sales, would be beneficial to learn how each uses the printers on a day-to-day basis. What does your staff like about the current setup? What do they dislike? Are your printers hardwired or connected wirelessly? Has your team noticed intermittent issues with those types of connections? All these questions may seem routine, but understanding how the current setup works for your staff will give you a good insight into what features you can’t live without and what effect the business flow will have on your company.

2. Will you need to be able to connect to other branch locations?

Knowing your connectivity requirements upfront can reduce the need for printer changes in the future. If the office needs to link to other company locations, working with your IT staff to deploy printers with Group Policy is an easy way to manage print environments. When connections are more complex, deploying a print management solution can provide flexibility by bringing all print devices into one management tool.

3. What type of work environment do you have?

Over the past few years, the office setup has changed dramatically. Hybrid work environments with a mix of on-site and remote work need deployment planning and coordination. Many staff members will have several devices, including laptops, tablets, and smartphones. They may also use a wide variety of apps for printing documents. If you are thinking of changing your workforce mobility, make sure you factor this into your print deployment and remove obstacles that might hinder a BYOD or mobile device printing scenario.

4. How big will the workforce be?

While staff count will be a consideration for your expansion in other areas, use this count to gauge how big of a print device footprint you will need. According to studies, businesses should aim for one printer for every 4.4 employees working at a location. While this isn’t a strict rule, the need to understand the day-to-day printing demands of your staff based on the type of work conducted is critical. Some offices might need more multifunction capabilities from their print devices than others, you should base your printer decisions on merit, specs, and budget.

5. How long will this office be operational?

Please don’t take offense to this question. The question aims to clarify the use of this new location. Some enterprises lease their printers because they know that they will only be in the new office for a year or two, and leasing might be the best option for their budget. On the other hand, some businesses may purchase their printers because they know that they will be in the new office for several years. Knowing the intended length of time that the printer will be in the new office helps make a decision about which printer to buy or lease.

6. Is there an opportunity to get better?

Opening a new location can be the perfect time to start a new office productivity & optimization goal. Document workflow best practices include selecting a printer that is the most cost-efficient for the volume of work your team does and getting the highest quality prints possible. Setting up a paperless office where staff members can view important documents on their computer or tablet monitors instead of printing them out is another way to improve your team’s productivity. An office productivity & optimization project might also include switching to a cloud-based document management system to keep your team connected to important information. Considering piloting the project at a new site protects the changes from affecting the core business at a well-oiled office location.

A Smart Start

Adding a new office location is exciting, but it can also be quite a challenge for many companies. Getting an idea of what your office printer & document management needs early in the planning phase can help make getting the office online a smooth process. There are many factors that should go into making a final decision on a new office printer. Your mission, the ideal configuration, the type of work your staff does, the projected growth, and other factors should be weighed and reviewed before making a final decision. If you have questions on how to craft the best print and document solution for your next office, we love to provide a free one-on-one consultation.