With inputs from Anil Chopra

Efficiency, productivity cost, and longevity – one needs to keep these factors in mind before buying printers for their business. However, selecting the best printer for your business acumen isn’t going to be an easy task unless you do thorough research and understand your spectrum, to weigh up what’s most important for your business. Many times, it’s difficult to find the right printer that does everything without shelling out much from your pocket. Make sure you know what’s right for you, so you don’t end up paying for unnecessary features.

Local or Network Printer?

Before deciding whether to go for a local or network printer, it’s important to really understand your printing requirements better. That’s because when you’re buying a printer, there’s an upfront cost and a recurring cost in terms of the per page printing cost, toner re-fills, replacement of other consumables like drum, cartridge, etc. If your printing volumes aren’t very high, then going for a network printer is not feasible, because it would remain under-utilized and you’ll be unnecessarily spending higher on its maintenance. In other words, its total cost of ownership will be high.

Therefore, for low print volumes, a local printer would suffice. It will be connected directly to a users’ system via a USB cable, and will therefore only be able to service that single user. In fact, there are ways of sharing it with a few users if required, but for that, the system it’s connected to must remain switched on all the time.

If you have a creative business, then also it makes sense to go for local printers for your designers and creative professionals, as only they would be needing it most of the time.

A network printer on the other hand is useful when multiple people need to use it, implying high printing volumes. In such a case, giving each user a separate printer would be a costly affair as you would have to manage each separately, buy separate printer supplies, etc. Many businesses therefore opt for networked printers, because they’re sharable by multiple users. The advantage is that they’re accessible to whoever you’d like no matter where they’re sitting in the office.

Nowadays, besides LAN connectivity, printers also come with WiFi support, and allow users to fire prints even from their smartphones and other mobile devices. This can be a great feature to have if you need to keep your printer in a location where there’s no LAN port.

Now a days many businesses are opting for mobile printing either by connecting the device to the printer or using a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection. Not all printers are compatible with this emerging technology, but it’s something to consider if you have a highly mobile-reliant workforce.

Single or Multi-Function?

This question is not only relevant for individual users but even for a business. There are multi-function network printers available that will allow users to not only print, but also copy, scan, email and fax. The cost per copy of these devices is also affordable, and will save you the trouble of buying different devices for different functions. It will also be more cost-effective. These printers save resources and tend to last much longer. They provide better handling, faster printing speeds, and finishing options.

Print Speed

This is an important parameter for businesses. With multiple users accessing the same network printer, it should be able to print fast enough to avoid people queuing up in front of it. Opt for print speeds of at least 20 pages per minute (ppm), else it will be too slow for multiple users. For high-volume printing, consider speeds above 40 ppm.

Some of the most sophisticated machines reach 100 ppm, which is far more than most small businesses need.

Know What’s Right for you

How much you print, what you print and how many of your employees will be printing – these are some of the important points you need to address before you start buying printers for your business. Here are certain fundamental features to look for.

Laser printers are by far the most popular in offices. These are reliable and fast, and they produce high-quality text. The network laser printers have good memory and built-in hard-drives, which help speed up printing. Their running costs are reasonable because toner is relatively inexpensive compared with other methods of printing.

Inkjet printers are more common for personal use and home offices, although they can be suitable for some small business uses. Inkjet printers are less expensive up front and the photo quality is high, so they are great for brochures, fliers and documents that contain graphics. Office-quality inkjet printer with networking capabilities are less common. This is primarily due to the high ongoing costs of replacing ink, which is not possible for high-volume printing.

If you’re going for a network printer, then these are two crucial aspects to consider. Security becomes important if you’re printing some really confidential documents on a network printer. It shouldn’t happen that buy the time you walk up to the printer, someone else has already pick-up or read your documents. Security becomes important here. Nowadays, printers give passwords to different users so that when they fire a print, it will only execute the printing if the user walks up to the printer and enters the password.

Monitoring and management becomes important to track printing volumes and reduce the wastage. Many times, users fire unnecessary prints and then forget to collect them. This wastes a lot of paper. Printer monitoring software can not only track print volumes, but also track them by user. This way, the users would be careful to only print what’s really required.

Conclusion

There are many suitable printers for business, so look for the features you need from what all we just covered and then look for the right one for your need. Please visit their online store at https://store.hp.com/in-en/default/ to choose the right one for your needs. It shows all the available options.