The paperless office was exposed long ago as one of the great myths of the computer age, yet even today few user organisations stop to count the mounting cost of printing.

Ken Weilerstein, analyst at Gartner, says: “Most organisations do not manage office print and copy carefully enough. Many report they have far too much equipment and only a few know what their needs really are or how they could be better met.

“Paradoxically, spending is likely to increase in and after 2007 as price inducements entice users to print more colour pages. Organisations that fail to take control now may see their costs climb.”

Research by YouGov on behalf of Fujitsu Siemens has found that the average British office worker prints 22 pages a day - a figure that equals 120 billion sheets a year in the UK as a whole, equivalent to a stack of paper more than 8,000 miles high.

With this in mind it is no surprise that print management solutions are a booming business.

Louella Fernandes, principal analyst at Quocirca, says: “Organisations are finally starting to recognise the financial and environmental benefits of rightsizing the printer and imaging fleet through print management, which leads to reduced costs and improved productivity.”

Tracey Rawling Church, marketing director of Kyocera, a vendor of printers and multi-functional devices (MFDs), says the aim of any print management solution is to collate information. “What is being printed, by whom, on how many devices, how often and how much is it costing? Print management solutions make this key data accessible in a format that can be easily manipulated and interpreted so that the printer and the MFD fleet can be deployed with optimum efficiency,” she explains.

Organisations can build up user profiles and track usage of paper and consumables, for example. The analysis is made available as tables, charts and graphs and in a range of data formats from PDF and HTML to CSV and XML. This enables companies to build up a clear picture of how their printer resources are being used - often for the first time.

They also get a clear picture of the printers themselves. “Print management tools can discover all network-connected printing devices and determine how many documents are being printed on each device, meaning that device use can be monitored,” says Fernandes.

“For example, this may mean replacing outdated single-function desktop devices with MFDs.”

Rawling Church says: “The ability of print management to identify what devices they have can come as a shock to some companies, as piecemeal additions to the network are suddenly revealed at a stroke.”

Armed with this information, the organisation can set about reducing or optimising print volumes to bring down costs. The cost of printing can be allocated to particular cost centres - departments, teams, even individual users - so everyone can be made aware of and directly accountable for what they print.

This can be extended to individual clients and projects, enabling the organisation to charge the cost of printing directly to its customers, recouping some of the costs or even creating an additional revenue stream. Universities find it a handy way of charging students for printing, for example.

“Accountability is a wonderful thing,” says Rawling Church. “Being able to show a department exactly what print volume they are generating and the associated cost is a major step towards reducing unnecessary printing. It encourages departments to develop their own responsible printing policies and review these regularly to assess progress.”

If this does not do the trick, she adds, more proactive measures can be implemented, such as defaulting to draft mode and double-sided printing, and limiting the amount that an individual can print or the use of fancy bindings.

“You can also limit the times at which individuals can print, which goes a long way to preventing unauthorised printing of holiday snaps outside office hours,” Rawling Church adds.

Adam Poole, head of channel marketing at vendor Canon Business Solutions, says that developments in management software have enabled MFD interface customisation for the individual user. “This ensures that they are only presented with functions and applications that are required for their specific role, reducing complexity and the need for new device training,” he says.

As noted by Gartner, the costs of colour printing are escalating and print management can help keep these in check.

Alan McLeish, product marketing manager at vendor Oki Printing Solutions, says: “Companies are increasingly using print management either to prevent users from printing in colour altogether or to restrict the software packages they can use for colour printing.

“This need is likely to be an increasingly important driver of new technology in the future.”

Money can also be saved by intelligent routing, says Steve Hewson, a spokesman for vendor Toshiba Tec. “Print management software recognises the volume of a print job and directs it to machines that are available and best suited for the job, to those that are cheaper for high volume printing, for example,” he says.

Similar algorithms can be applied to achieve best-cost colour printing, and to optimise the use of all printers so that fewer machines stand idle and the overall number of devices can be pegged or reduced.

Print management can aid both users and IT support professionals through proactive monitoring and remote configuration.

Steve Pearce, marketing product manager for vendor Samsung, says: “Remote monitoring tools can inform the IT department of any potential issues before they occur, enabling them to manage their time better. Support staff can receive emails telling them when paper is running low, so they can remedy the problem before it affects users.”

The cost savings achieved through better accountability, proactive maintenance and more efficient use of print resources can be considerable. “Organisations that take the right steps to actively manage their office printing and copying can save 10 to 30 per cent of their spending,” says Weilerstein.

Vendors agree. The savings vary, says Mark Anderson, office product business manager for vendor Xerox, but “large organisations could save in the region of €250 (£174) per office-based employee per year, or 20 to 30 per cent of the overall imaging and printing costs.”

Although it may curtail their ability to print what they like when they like, print management does have some advantages for end users.

“One of the most exciting potential developments is follow-me printing, which allows individuals who find their chosen printer is busy to simply divert their job to another printer using a swipe card or user code,” says McLeish.

Similarly, jobs may be routed to another device if the selected one is offline or out of order.

Print management software is widely available, with most major printer and MFD vendors offering free basic software and paid-for premium products - either their own, or from third parties such as Equitrac, PrintAudit and Ringdale.