Raman Nagpal, Senior Director and General Manager, Print and Scan Business, Adobe Systems, talks to Pupul Dutta about the company’s latest offering that promises to save printing costs over and above an MPS solution.
How does Adobe’s LeanPrint solution help companies reduce printing cost?
While the world has gone digital, most people still need to print at office and at home, which adds to the spiraling cost and depletes environmental resources, with current printing solutions being restrictive and unintuitive. Adobe LeanPrint is an enterprise-class, software-only printing solution that significantly reduces print costs.
It does so by using an innovative method to reformat the layout of documents when printing from popular applications and browsers. The software helps in bringing down printing cost by saving paper and toner/ink when printing from applications like MS-Word, MS-Excel, Adobe Acrobat/Reader, MS-PowerPoint, and browsers like IE, Chrome and Firefox. Support for MS-Outlook is planned.
Adobe LeanPrint features super saver and toner saver modes. The super saver option dynamically transforms longer, full-color and B&W documents and presentations into shorter, more resource-friendly documents by automatically re-rendering the layout to be more space efficient. It also allows the user to easily transform any DOC, XLS, or PDF file to a print-optimised version with a single click while reducing the number of pages and amount of toner required, regardless of whether a document is printed in color or gray-scale.
LeanPrint is very easy for IT managers to deploy. It has a small footprint and can be conveniently made available on users’ computers. Further, with the LeanPrint dashboard IT managers can track and control printing within an organisation from a single control center; monitor all print jobs and costs as well as the savings from Adobe LeanPrint usage at individual user, group and organisation level. They get insights into printing trends and are empowered to select and implement responsible print practices across the organisation.
What Adobe is offering can also be achieved by using Managed Print Services (MPS) as a solution that not only helps reduce paper usage but prevents wastage and hence, expenditure. What’s your take on that?
This is one of the myths that we would like to clarify. Yes, MPS as a solution does help you reduce paper usage to some extent. But assuming that you have achieved all possible cost savings by just partnering with an MPS provider is a misconception. Adobe LeanPrint, by design, helps you save print costs over and above what is achieved by any MPS offering. In fact it works very well in both scenarios – whether an organisation has adopted MPS or not.
For the organisations that procure all the print supplies including paper and printer cartridges, the savings are amplified with both less paper and less ink consumption which drastically reduces the operating costs on printing.
What is currently the scenario in India when it comes to saving per paper cost by CIOs? What kind of solutions do they prefer most?
Currently, most companies do not even know their actual print costs and try to save money by reducing toner consumption while others are restrictive to employees like applying quotas on number of prints. However, this may not translate into savings for CIOs. Adobe LeanPrint addresses the need to save and manage the print costs with an MPS implementation or otherwise. LeanPrint-Assessment phase helps understand the current total print costs and different aspects of user printing behaviour. This includes insights such as who is printing, how much, from which applications to which printers etc. and you can slice and dice this data whichever way you like – at user, group and enterprise level. Using these insights, the enterprise can determine specific opportunities to save print costs and then use the LeanPrint-Savings phase to actually realise those savings.
What kind of challenges do you face with CIOs while explaining to them the benefits of Adobe’s solutions?
The biggest challenge that the CIOs face with regard to printing is to bring down the print cost without compromising either on quality or quantity of documents that need to be printed. With renewed focus on environmental stewardship, CIOs are also concerned about reducing the organisation’s carbon footprint. Hence, organisations and CIOs have grown increasingly vigilant about their costs of doing business and are actively seeking new ways to manage costs while enhancing productivity. However, many organisations find it difficult to identify the exact costs of the various aspects of their print operations. Also, there is a prevailing myth that the time, effort and cost of reducing print costs are high with low ROI.
