HP Color Planning Guide: Evaluating Color Printers Is Easier Than You Think.
Color printing in the office is no longer limited to a specialized department or niche marketing firms or large-scale enterprises with considerable financial resources. Today, color printing is an essential tool in everyday business, a necessity for competing in a fast-paced and dynamic marketplace. In fact, the question in most offices — large and small — is not “whether” to incorporate color printers into their operations, but rather “when and how.”
As you consider expanding the color printing capabilities in your own office, important questions will arise that affect not only your purchasing decision, but also your strategies for effective use of color printing throughout the organization. This guide provides answers to common questions about color printing that will make you a better and more-informed user of color printing. Each section of this guide provides a different perspective for evaluating printers. You may not need to read the entire document before choosing a printer. Any one of the sections may provide the answers you need. If you find you need more information, simply move to another perspective (section). Each section begins by posing a question:
HP Color Planning Guide
Color in the workplace—it’s here to stay.
Color printing is a powerful tool that is now considered a mainstay in most organizations—from everyday printing to high-end production. In fact, the question in most organizations of all sizes is not whether to incorporate color into their printing and imaging activities, but what choices to make to best fit their needs.
The good news is that determining the right color printing and imaging choices doesn’t have to be a daunting task. This guide will help you determine the HP products you need to create a productive, efficient color printing and imaging environment.
Get Dirty with Color
Studies have shown that as much as 60% of consumers decide to purchase a new product based on its color rather than quality, workmanship or price guarantee.
It makes sense then that color should be included within proposals and marketing statements.
Here are some practical ideas to include color in your proposals and improve your sales effectiveness.
Put the client’s logo on your proposal. Make sure the client’s logo is larger than your own.
Incorporate the client’s colors throughout the proposal. This keeps the document familiar.
Color in the Office - It makes business sense
Xerox Color
Color. Nothing is more effective when your business-critical documents absolutely must make a compelling first impression — and in today’s ultra-competitive business climate, first impressions mean everything. Now, thanks to Xerox, there’s never been a better time to seize the competitive advantage of color with the cost controls you need, without sacrificing the black-and-white capabilities you rely on.
Outstanding Xerox Image Quality
Xerox leads the color printing industry, delivering unrivaled print quality, reliability, speed and productivity through more than 20 years of technology innovations. Xerox color printers and MFPs provide all the benefits of black-and-white performance, plus the competitive advantage of color when your work demands it.
Smart Technology
• Total ease-of-use. Simple and consistently engineered device user interfaces and print drivers deliver the most frequently used features and functions on the first screen, making both basic and complex jobs easy to complete.
• Xerox Extensible Interface Platform (EIP) allows for the customization of Xerox MFP touchscreens, making the devices easier to use. Users can log on to the system and access third-party software applications that are tailored to meet their business needs.
• Superior real-world printing. Xerox color printers and MFPs deliver superior productivity when printing real-world office applications3. Plus, true MFP multitasking avoids device bottlenecks.
Color: Making the most of color
The Background
Midwest Transit Equipment, Inc. is the largest new and used bus dealer in the United States. At Midwest Transit they pride themselves on being innovative with marketing and sales efforts. Part of Midwest Transit's marketing plan includes an active direct mail program targeted at key potential customers. The marketing has been effective in driving new business, but there were also growing supply bills for their HP color printer. Midwest Transit experimented with outsourcing print jobs but was not able to get the price and quick turnaround time they wanted. They needed a way to handle in-house color printing that was able to combine low cost with quality output and reliability.
The Solution
Midwest Transit decided on a Canon Color imageRUNNER 3200 from Martin Whalen to produce all their color prints. The imageRUNNER with a saddle-stitch finisher allows mail pieces to be printed and folded at a pace that keeps up with the high-speed marketing department.
Communicating Better with Color
Did you hear the one a few years back about the intern who faxed some charts to a team of reviewers in advance of a meeting—with a cover note directing their attention to the figures in green? Quite a faux pas in the days before color faxes. But it’s no joke: Color can be one of the most powerful tools at an organization’s disposal when it comes to organizing information, increasing understanding, and making people and operations more productive and efficient. And today, the technology for color printing to help achieve these ends is more advanced, accessible and affordable than ever.
“If you want to understand how color impacts us, next time you get in the car, take note of how you stop at red and go on green. Color plays a big role in persuasion. We should understand its value.”
–Bryan Eisenberg, ”The Color of Money,” ClickZ Network
Security Capabilities Protect your business-critical information with Xerox.
Protecting sensitive, proprietary, or classified information is more critical than ever. As more information is being created, distributed, and archived digitally, the risk that this data could be intercepted or corrupted increases.
Without the proper protection, hackers, disgruntled employees, or even spies can gain access to you or your customers’ sensitive business information and make it public record with the click of a mouse.
And as if matters weren’t complicated enough, many industries must now comply with government and state regulations, not to mention satisfy a customer base with deep privacy concerns.
Thankfully, Xerox has the security capabilities to help. For the last 20 years, Xerox has been a leader in providing secure document solutions to a variety of industries across the globe. In fact, every Xerox product and service we offer was designed with security in mind and to seamlessly integrate into existing security frameworks—giving you and your customers more protection and peace of mind.
Color and Black-and-White Printing: What’s the Difference?
What’s the difference between color and black-and-white printing? It may seem like a simple question on the surface. But when it comes to everyday office printing, there are more differences between the two than you may realize—in cost, technology, functionality and other factors—and more similarities, too. If you’re thinking about incorporating more color into your office printing environment, you need to understand all these differences and similarities in order to make effective (not to mention cost-effective) choices.
“To put color print pricing in context, in 1994 a typical departmental-sized black-and-white laser printer would cost you around $5000 with a per-page price of about 8 or 9 cents. For less than that cost today, you can have a high-quality color printer. The idea that color is too expensive for in-house, everyday use is as antiquated as that 1994 black-and-white laser printer.”
–Don Jones, The Definitive Guide to Office Color Printing
Charging Back: Making Color Pay For Itself
One way to control your costs for color printing is to charge them back to those who are doing the printing. Charging back these costs can help reduce operational costs in two ways.
1. Internal users who are billed for all or some of their color printing are likely to be more aware of, and more mindful about, how much they print—and, as a result, more judicious in their use of printing resources. This can result in less usage.
2. By billing external users, organizations can eliminate, or at least significantly reduce, the color printing and copying costs that they normally absorb on behalf of their clients or patrons.
Opportunities to charge back color printing In addition to charging back color printing costs to internal and external users, organizations can charge back by group or individual. Opportunities
for charging back might include:
- departments within a larger organization
- offices in remote locations
- clients of professional firms
- individual users of institutional resources
