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Anand Parthasarathy

Print document delivery systems have been combined with RFID tools in industries such as automobile manufacturing… a panel at HP’s Print 2.0 event in Shanghai.

Anand Parthasarathy

Office automation created undoubted efficiencies that harnessed the personal computer, the printer and the emerging Internet. But it did not eliminate paper from the average office. In fact, today, the world — particularly the corporate world — is responsible for churning out more printed paper than ever before.

Major printer makers should be laughing all the way to the bank: after all, no matter who does the printing, some one is using one of their printers.

But printer companies also realise that they can have too much of a good thing... that in the long run, it is better for everyone if customers got better value from their printers and perceived their suppliers as contributors to efficiency rather than mere sellers of boxes.

Why is why Hewlett Packard devoted almost half its presentations at a recent workshop of solutions for the small and medium business sector to smart software tools rather than just printing hardware. As a guest of the company in Shanghai, recently, I got to use some of these tools and learnt how even small enterprises, which could not afford the luxury of a dedicated IT management team, could tighten their printer-based activities.

The flagship of HP’s printing innovations palette is what it calls Web Jetadmin, an Internet-based print management tool, which gives customers the power to install, configure, monitor, troubleshoot, and manage their printers and print infrastructure — even if they are at remote locations.

It can schedule tasks at off-peak-hours; alert the manager if there is a malfunction; decide who gets to use which printer (limiting the use of colour if required). It can even put all printers — or some — into deep sleep over nights or weekends. The solution is tailored for enterprises that have more than 15 printers.

For those with a smaller number of printers, HP offers a scaled-down tool called Easy Printer Care. It may sound ironic that printer makers who have been extolling the visual reach and appeal of going all-colour also offer software that would restrict or regulate the use of colour printers in a network. HP Colour Access Control does just this: customers decide who prints in colour and when, which type of documents can be printed in colour, thus reducing colour toner usage.

This is because, at the end of the day, colour still costs almost two to three times as much as monochrome and most small enterprises have to watch the paise if the rupees have to be earned.

One solution that users such as libraries, educational institutions, and the like, will appreciate is the Controlled Cost Printing Solution, which can track usage and generate bills for every copy made. It can work with prepaid cards, cash-based operations or monthly billing.

Linking printers to PCs wirelessly is a fairly recent innovation and HP, like other makers, offers solutions that enable its new generation WiFi-enabled printers to ‘talk’ to other wireless devices, from laptops to mobile phones.

One hassle faced by corporates as well as lay customers is the need to install a specific driver software for every printer. Keeping track of driver CDs for a masala mix of printers can be a logistic nightmare — which is why the idea of a Universal Printer Driver (UPD), which works across a full family of printers, is so attractive.

HP’s UPD is now into version 4.5 and covers nearly 100 models: almost all its laser printers and many of the enterprise inkjets (Officejets). However, the driver, which is freely downloadable, does not cover the consumer end of HP’s inkjet range, so, as of now, it remains a corporate solution, not a consumer one. That may be the reason why some of the features seem tailored for businesses rather than other users: the ability to add the function of printing on both sides of the paper is particularly useful.

One of the most useful software solutions launched by HP is the in-house marketing feature. Small businesses need to roll out brochures, leaflets, trade literature, as much as big ones. But they usually can’t afford the services of a professional design agency.

Creating marketing collateral in-house is made simple with HP tools that provide a complete family of brochure templates, clip art, fonts, etc. In addition to the Web-based resources, the company has put together a CD for free distribution called Business Marketing Design, which includes some complementary high-resolution stock photos and discounts for paid design tools, such as Logoworks, as well as over 100 brochure templates.

The recent acquisition by HP of Exstream Software adds the final piece in the jigsaw of document creation and delivery: the ability to do Variable Data Printing (VDP), that is documents where every copy can be personalised. Such delivery mechanisms can be enhanced by integration with other cool tools such as Radio Frequency Identification or RFID: large enterprises, such as auto manufacturers, have done this to control the flow of information from individual manufactured parts to machinery to product lifecycle management systems.

By enabling many shared documents — even drawings — to be digitised, these solutions reduce the need for multiple print copies and encourage tighter document control.

At the end of the day, what corporate customers demand from their computing and printing infrastructure is manageable operating cost and smooth pathways to upgrades.

In Shanghai, one buzzword much bandied about was TCO — Total Cost of Ownership: how to keep it in check.

For many of the small enterprises who are the targets of these software solutions to cushion the cost of hardware tasks such as printing, this might be one buzzword too many. They will better understand it if told that it helps determine if their acquisition of the next printer is a decision that is paisa vasool.

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