In a tight economy the price point of any product becomes an important deciding factor. Unfortunately we’re often quick to dismiss the higher upfront cost of purchases in favour of the lower one, without ever realising that in the long run this actually costs more money. Especially when it comes to printers, most people simply don’t know what to look for and how to avoid the pitfalls of low end printers eating up your monthly budgets.
If you want to avoid frustrated end users, huge cartridge purchase bills and high maintenance costs read on to see an example of calculating the real cost of 3 particular printers over time, taking monthly printing volume into account, and apply the thought process to your next purchasing decision of equipment.
Printer Purchase Scenario
You are the IT Manager for a company of 70 users. Your company is about to hire 2 additional finance staff members and they require a mono laser printer that they need to share. The company prefers to purchase their printers as apposed to leasing. You contact your IT Procurement Consultant and request a quote on 3 HP network printers.
Printer options
The Follow up
The Financial Manager chooses the entry level printer to keep costs as low as possible.
The decision was purely made on upfront cost and no consideration was given to monthly print volumes.
As an example let’s say the 2 financial staff members will be printing an average of 2000 pages per month.
So how does that affect the company in the long run from a cost perspective?
The Breakdown
Conclusion
Upfront, the HP P1606DN is the cheapest option, but in the longer run it actually has the highest operating cost.
In the end choosing the entry level printer is not the most cost effective solution and in fact proves to be the least cost effective.
We hope that with this example we showed you how to consider actual usage in the overall cost of any purchase and calculate the true cost. Add this information the next time you request a quote from your IT Procurement Consultant so that they can give you an appropriate quote based on your requirements over time.
Did you find this example useful? Let us know in the comments below. Are there any other examples where you could apply this costing method to find the actual cost? Share your stories with us below.
All our clients have access to our procurement department to help them source equipment, which is a small but very important part of having Space Age Technologies as your managed IT service provider.