Three small questions that will make a big difference in your office

When you’re a small business, you have to think smart. Every decision – big or small – can impact the bottom line. In the last year, this has been even more prevalent, with 70 per cent of small businesses reporting revenues had declined as a result of the pandemic. Business leaders need to find new ways of reducing costs while ensuring employees have the tools they need to stay productive. 

Technology is a great place to start. Well-considered tech investments have the power to boost your business, while ineffective technology is a drain on your wallet and employee time. Small business owners should be asking these three questions to ensure technology – even if it’s a relatively small investment like a printer - adds value, without ballooning costs.

1. What’s the actual total cost of ownership?

With many technology investments, people often think it’s a one-time cost. You pay for the new product or service and that’s it. This is a dangerous misconception. Whether its software or hardware, the chances are you will incur costs in addition to the initial purchase. With a cloud platform this could be subscription costs or with critical office hardware such as a printer, this includes things like paper, ink and maintenance. 

You might have selected a low-cost printer with the view of saving money, but if you haven’t considered what the total cost of ownership is, you could be in for a nasty shock. The total cost of ownership of a printer is based on the initial purchase cost of hardware plus the costs of consumables – such as ink or toner - over time. If you select a low-cost model but it only gives you a small number of pages per ink cartridge, you may well see the cost of printing increasing over time. If the printer itself doesn’t produce high-quality printed documents that are fit for purpose, staff may need to reprint multiple times, wasting paper, ink and time. What’s more, if the machine in question isn’t energy and resource efficient, you will be running up office bills unnecessarily – not to mention increasing your carbon footprint. 

For a business to survive and thrive, you need to know exactly what your office equipment is going to cost. The new MAXIFY GX6050 and GX7050 inkjet printers leads the pack in energy and resource efficiency, delivering an average of 85 per cent savings on the total cost of ownership (TCO) compared to the top 10 inkjet and laser printers . With MegaTank refillable ink tank technology, it can print up to 14,000 pages   from a single set of colour ink bottles and up to 1.5 times more pages in Economy Mode. Quality of print isn’t reduced, as a 4 pigment ink-based system provides excellent optical density and highlighter, abrasion and water resistance.

2. How easy is it for my team to use?

It’s all well and good implementing new technology, particularly as businesses look to streamline workflows and drive efficiency. However, one mistake many organisations make is investing in solutions that are too challenging to use, require training, or even specialist IT support. If you are a small business, you can’t afford to invest in technology that makes your team’s life harder and it certainly can’t require you to add additional headcount or costs in the form of IT support.

When looking for office equipment that will make a positive impact on productivity, its got to be simple for anyone – regardless of skill level – to use and maintain.

Printers are a common headache in the office – paper jams, low ink or just failure to get documents to print. There are solutions that take away some of this pain – the MAXIFY GX6050 and MAXIFY GX7050 for instance are designed to reduce downtime by avoiding these very issues. With easy-to-use refillable ink bottles, a user-replaceable maintenance cartridge and up to 600 sheet paper capacity, businesses have a printer that just keeps going. The 6.9cm LCD touchscreen simplifies use and displays options to the user, including multiple scanning options – whether that’s to email, a folder or a USB.

3. Does this fit into my existing infrastructure?

It’s much harder to change your processes and practices to suit new technology investments than selecting new products that fit into your existing infrastructure. To avoid friction in your workflows its essential that you consider how equipment like a printer will fit into this and whether it has the functionality to enhance the work you do.

There are a few elements to consider here: Does the device do everything I need it to do? Does it seamlessly work alongside existing technology? Does it fit into my office environment?

For small businesses, it’s likely you don’t have the budget for multiple printers, let alone the space. Having a versatile solution means it can be used for a multitude of tasks and to support different areas of your small business – whether that’s printing payslips or creating contracts for new customers. Opting for a printer, like the new MAXIFY GX6050 or MAXIFY GX7050, which can support diverse media is a great step towards enabling this.

With employees increasingly leveraging personal devices, there is a need for hardware to offer wireless connectivity and compatibility with mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to support flexible working styles. Without this level of integration, your printer can become a bottleneck.

A small decision like which office printer to choose can have a massive impact on the day-to-day running of your business. It’s easy to think that choosing the cheapest printer will offer you the best return on investment, but quite often businesses run into challenges such as resource consumption, maintenance, reliability and applicability. Take time to consider these investments and you’ll see improved efficiency that can make a huge difference to your business.