What Is Print Management?
Print management is the process by which each individual manages the printing of materials within a company or organization, including security enhancements, authorization settings, print job management, and printer settings.
Print management makes information visible and reduces the cost of printing materials. The main role of print management is to manage the printing costs collectively, limit the number of sheets to reduce printing costs, or force a change in settings to black and white.
It also limits unauthorized use of the printing press by requiring the scanning of IC cards or other devices to activate the press and by print management of the logs.
Uses of Print Management
Print management systems are installed in companies with several printing presses on a single floor or in schools with printing presses on the premises that can be used by anyone. The advantages of installing a print management system include the ability to manage the printing presses centrally at each location and to reduce wasteful printing costs.
Although many of today’s printers are capable of printing in both color and monochrome, the system can also control printing by limiting printing to monochrome.
Principle of Print Management
There are many principles of print management, but we will use the example of a company’s shared printing press to illustrate the principles.
The backbone of a print management system is a dedicated management server. This server centrally manages printing instructions obtained from employees’ PCs and sends signals to each printing machine. The employee then activates the printing machine through his or her IC card to start printing.
All of this printing information is stored on the server, so that if an error occurs, all information is sent to the Print Management PCs for prompt repair, and after repair, printing can be redone from immediately after the error occurred. In this way, the main function of print management is to manage all printing instructions obtained from multiple computers centrally and send printing instructions to the appropriate printer.
In addition, it is possible to send a signal to a printer to restrict the printing of a monochrome document that is scheduled to be printed in black and white from printing in color, which is a very costly process. Print management can also help to reduce costs significantly by eliminating waste.
How to Choose Print Management
When choosing a print management system, the following should be taken into consideration. It is also important to have a trial period and actually review the system before implementing it.
1. Functionality
Print management functions can be divided into those for users who print and those for administrators. At this point, it is important to make sure that the necessary functions are provided for each position.
2. Adequacy of Cost
It is necessary to confirm that the cost at the time of introduction and running costs are in line with the budget. It is important to estimate in advance how long it will take to recover the cost of printing, as print management can also help to reduce the cost of printing.
3. Operability
Printing functions may be used by any employee. Therefore, it is important to have an operation performance that allows the user to do what they want to do intuitively, not something that requires reading a manual beforehand.
4. Security
Most printed materials contain confidential information. Therefore, it is very important that the data stored on the server is not only leak proof, but also resistant to external attacks.
5. Support Adequacy
It is necessary to ensure that support and backup systems are in place in the event of a malfunction.