Reduce office equipment misuse
Up to 80% of South Africans misuse or even abuse their employers’ office automation equipment. Human nature being what it is, inappropriate use of company property is unlikely to ever be eradicated, but it can be managed to the benefit of both employer and employee. Holger Groenert, product marketing manager at Itec SA, explains how.
Office automation equipment, such as printers, fax machines, scanner and photocopiers, makes people’s lives easier. Considering that you spend about nine hours a day at work, what harm can there be in making a copy of your ID document or sending the occasional fax, right? The fact is that office workers print around 25 pages per day, most of which end up in the bin. When these are colour printouts, the costs become astronomical.
People misuse office equipment simply because they can. In many cases misuse is tolerated because no-one wants to work in an environment that resembles a prison camp. However, with the downturn in the global economy and the cash crunch that SA is facing, companies will have to start controlling this type of misuse in order to contain costs.
Personal use of office equipment inflates operational costs for business by tens of millions each year, an expense that is passed onto the client. Consider that the running costs alone for 10 000 copies are in the region of R800 per month. It may not sound like a huge amount, but, in a large corporate, it adds up.
Moving to a multifunctional platform removes individual machines and replaces them with all-in-ones that are accessible to everybody. Multi-functional devices can include authenticators to authenticate users. The user is identified when they log onto the system, and they have certain rights attached to their profile. These may include or exclude the right to print, fax, copy and scan. It may also include the right, for example, to print no more than 500 pages per month. An audit trail ensures that records are kept for every transaction performed. Reports can be drawn for each user and billing can be attached to those. From a document security point of view, software is available to track which documents a user has printed.
This not only cuts out abuse, it also increases manageability, enforces accountability, and reduces costs significantly, by between 20% and 40%. This practice also has the advantage of creating awareness about the appropriate use of office automation equipment. This in turn helps to avoid unnecessary waste that occurs when people print documents and e-mails that may just as easily be read on screen.
With office automation budgets expanding every year, it is clear that no amount of digitisation is going to replace paper. The obvious solution is, therefore, to monitor and control how much of it we use.
Office equipment abuse discussion
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