By Lisa Reider, BLI Senior Product Editor, Scanners and Environmental
As part of its Managed Print Services offerings, Xerox recently introduced the Xerox Print Awareness Tool, which lets users see their personal print use and adjust their printing habits accordingly. While there is no shortage of administrator-focused utilities that tally up usage for a group or fleet of devices, this handy tool is aimed squarely at end users in the organization—users who typically want to support “green” and cost-cutting initiatives, but who may need a reminder from time to time. The tool also provides a desktop dashboard that offers sustainability tips, suggestions to help minimize printing and a running monthly tally of paper saved thus far.
A user’s print activities can be shared and compared against organizational goals and fellow employees. Administrators can also set up a reward system to encourage print reductions based on a certain amount of points accrued each month. Xerox says the points system is based on a combination of the users’ print job characteristics and the weighting that is given to each print behavior category (simplex, duplex, color, black). A job printed with color toner, for example, will use more print points than that same job printed with black toner. Incentives can based on the group’s collective performance. A group’s average performance is compared against past totals to gauge whether they have improved their printing habits. A summary PDF is them sent to the client manager to show which group has improved and which group needs to further reduce their print output.
According to Xerox, the solution will pose potentially habit-changing questions to the user, such as whether something is worth printing, or whether simplex or duplex mode is warranted. Simply deciding not to print something not only saves paper and toner use, but also reduces the energy consumption of the printer or MFP. And deciding to print in duplex mode over simplex mode (when warranted) can quickly add up in print-intensive offices.
With its initial launch, the product was sold as part of Xerox’s existing MPS contracts, however, the company says a standalone version will be available in the US in the coming weeks and globally shortly thereafter. Xerox Print Awareness Tool includes a Xerox job tracking agent and works with Xerox’s core MPS and NextGen offerings. It can also be run with Equitrac, YSoft and Preton job tracking tools. Pricing for the standalone version will be on a per-user basis. In addition, since the solution resides on each user’s PC, it is not directly tied to a Xerox printer or MFP, but the printing habits as initiated from the user’s PC. For more information, check out Xerox’s Managed Print Services website.