Augusta, GA -- In an article today on the Computerworld Australia website, a paperless office may not be entirely realistic, says Bruce Dahlgren, HP’s senior vice president of managed enterprise solutions, imaging and printing group. He feels the more accurate reality is that “‘the way people print and copy is changing.’”
A survey conducted by HP of their 2600 MPS clients located all over the world “showed that 84 percent of print and copy jobs were three pages or less.” This is just one indication that while things are not totally paperless, the dissemination and distribution of information is happening electronically with a higher and higher frequency. Despite this trend, Dahlgren is still not convinced.
The HP MPS service overall is worth about $5.5 billion and tallies 18.5 billion pages printed each annually. Despite potential competition from Dell, HP still has a firm hold on 40% of the market share in Australia.
It is important to realize that the overarching goal of MPS is not to eliminate printing, but to make it more efficient. This involves eliminating unnecessary printers and controlling the number of pages printed. and the amount of ink used. Dahlgren observed a shift from a printer being shared among just a few people, to a printer being shared by upwards of 15 people.
There are some companies who have managed to get away from printers altogether like Melbourne-based Kogan Technologies, an OEM consumer electronics store that functions as an online business only. All of their products are distributed by warehouses that are not owned by them and are all paperless as is the head office.
For Kogan Technologies, being paperless ensures that they don’t have to worry about overhead costs. All of their documents are kept online through a variety of Google cloud services and hosted data centers. Another key factor in being paperless is that they always have been. There was no need for a transition, which for many companies who want to go paperless, is a large stumbling block. The head of Kogan technologies, Ruslan Kogan believes that,“the initial outlay would be easily made up through the resulting efficiency savings.”
