• Print management: control, secure and streamline print

    Make printing work the way you need it

    Print management: control, secure and streamline printHeroSlider

Don't let printing and print costs get out of hand

Organizations of all sizes and in all sectors share a number of fundamental challenges, including keeping costs in check, protecting corporate information, and ensuring everyone can work efficiently and productively.

Print is one area where it's easy to let things get out of control, if you don't know who's printing what, which users or teams are printing and copying the most, or how much it all costs. Documents may go uncollected — wasting money and resources, and potentially putting sensitive information at risk. And if a printer develops a fault, how easily can users switch to an alternative device to avoid interruptions to their productivity?

You can solve these challenges and more using print management solutions to manage and protect your entire scan and print infrastructure. You'll be able to:

  • Gain an overview of your organization's print, copy and scan activities
  • Monitor who's printing what and when
  • Keep costs in check by implementing print rules and policies
  • Enable users to print from any device at any printer
  • Protect information and reduce waste through user authentication
  • Optimize workflow productivity and print queue management

Take control, gain insights, increase flexibility

You'll want to choose a print management solution that offers the features and functionalities that align with your organization's needs. Among the features you'll want to consider are:

User authentication

With centralized control over identities, you ensure that users have to authenticate themselves at a device to release a print job. As well as protecting sensitive information from prying eyes and reducing wasted print, this allows users to send a print job to any networked printer. Some print management solutions also make it easy to manage secure printing from mobile devices, including BYOD, and to enable guests or visitors to print without putting the security of your infrastructure at risk.

Monitoring and reporting

Allows you to track and monitor usage in real time through regular, scheduled and on-demand reporting. You have the data you need to identify and investigate excessive or other anomalous usage by an individual or department. You can also create executive reports that provide top-level management summaries and sustainability information.

User and cost management

You can manage and charge back costs by assigning users to cost centers, or enabling them to select the relevant cost center, billing or project code before printing a document. You can also assign price lists to different devices, cost centers and users.

And by creating print rules or policies, you can ensure tighter cost management by allowing different user roles to access different devices and features. For example, you can make duplex printing the default for everyone; or limit color printing to certain roles.

Cost accounting and budget management

To provide cost control and flexibility, choose a print management solution that allows you to assign print budgets to users, with the option to top up their accounts. In an environment such as a university, for example, this allows you to give students a free print quota that they can add to as required.

Print queue management

If you run an in-house print room, you may want to choose a print management solution that offers efficient management of your production print queue in addition to your office print queue. A print management solution can also simplify provision of multiple print queues across locations that have different technical requirements.

Print and printer security

In 2024, 63% of SMBs reported experiencing at least one print-related data breach in the previous 12 months. Your print management solution should come with features that help you improve the security of your documents and devices.

Workflow management

If you're on a digital transformation journey, you may want to be sure the solution you choose can also help you develop efficient scanning workflows to further optimize everyone's productivity and support process digitalization.

30%

Centralized user and cost management can help you reduce your spend on print services by as much as 30%*

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Is it time to move your print infrastructure to the cloud?

If managing your own printing and scanning environment and printer drivers is taking up too much time and effort, consider moving your print infrastructure to the cloud. Doing so can be a great starting point for cloud adoption, or can complete your organization's migration to the cloud.

Cloud print infrastructure offers a secure, reliable and cost-effective alternative that doesn't involve replacing any of your existing printers, scanners or MFPs. Additional benefits include simple options to enable guest printing, one-touch scanning to cloud storage repositories, and information security that complies with regulations like GDPR.

Answers to your questions

Your benefits at a glance

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Transparent cost control

Effectively manage users, devices, print features, budgets and quotas.

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Secure print environment
Reduce the risk of unauthorized access to devices and sensitive corporate information.

Real-time monitoring
Identify printing hotspots so that you can take action to change print behaviors.

Flexible reporting
Generate easy-to-understand reports for management overview; export report data into other formats for sharing and further analysis.

Further reading

Six ways to reduce the environmental impact of your print infrastructure
Six ways to reduce the environmental impact of your print infrastructure
Tackling climate change and the environmental impact is vital and something that everyone can play their part in helping to achieve. Thankfully, there is already a keen awareness of these requirements - according to Quocirca’s Future of Work Spotlight on Sustainability 2025 report (based on the views of 1,021 office workers and 521 IT decision makers), 71% say environmental issues and sustainability will be important or extremely important to their business by 2025.
How SMBs can prevent the security vulnerabilities associated with their printed documents
How SMBs can prevent the security vulnerabilities associated with their printed documents
A recent study by Quocirca has revealed serious gaps in the security of printed documents at small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). But what measures can SMBs take to increase document security?
Why your business should be embracing the exciting benefits of mobile print
Why your business should be embracing the exciting benefits of mobile print
Much of the workforce across Europe has embraced the agility and flexibility of hybrid working, choosing to work from a business or organisation’s workplace, a dedicated home office, or indeed any other location which is suitable and convenient for them to be productive and strike the right work/life balance.
The Four-Day Week - Can people be more productive while working less?
The Four-Day Week - Can people be more productive while working less?
The Four-Day Week aims to give workers more time in their personal lives, but without reducing their productivity or wages. What role can AI play here when it comes to automating tasks and thereby reducing working hours?
AirPrint in the office: Print securely from your iPhone
AirPrint in the office: Print securely from your iPhone
Smartphones are indispensable for both work and life, offering essential online services and collaboration tools. Yet with the number of options and network configurations, printing can appear to be complicated for some smartphone users. So how can you print effortlessly and securely from your smartphone to avoid any issues?
Your guide to NIS2 and what it means for your organisation’s cybersecurity
Your guide to NIS2 and what it means for your organisation’s cybersecurity
Failures or impairments of critical infrastructure can result in supply shortages, disruptions to public safety or other dramatic consequences. The EU directive NIS2 (Network and Information Systems Directive 2022) aims to strengthen the cyber resilience of European companies and institutions that form critical infrastructures. Are you one of the critical infrastructures and if so, what does your organisation need to consider with regard to NIS2?
Just how sustainable are data centres and Cloud Services?
Just how sustainable are data centres and Cloud Services?
More and more data is being stored and used in the Cloud and many companies are moving the majority (if not all) of their IT infrastructure into the Cloud.
Printing from cloud, nine reasons to make the switch
Printing from cloud, nine reasons to make the switch
You know about cloud printing, but maybe you don’t know why it’s so critical to your business. Here we explain why it’s not only a good solution, but the only solution.
Five important things to consider when choosing your Cloud Print technology partner
Five important things to consider when choosing your Cloud Print technology partner
With many businesses utilising remote and hybrid working practices, IT needs to be suitably flexible and able to cope with the demands of employees. Cloud-based IT systems can meet these requirements. The Quocirca Cloud Print Services 2022 Market Landscape report shows that 20% of responders expect their IT infrastructure to be fully in the cloud by 2025.

Learn how Konica Minolta Print Management solutions can help your business