(Credit: Print Audit)
The company has published the data from its User and Device Printer BI Dashboard, offering an insight into changes in printing from 2015, 2016, and 2017.
In a new blog, Print Audit has released the latest statistics and explored the printing trends that “are becoming clear.” The key metrics used by the company include average job size; duplex versus simplex; colour versus monochrome printing, and spend; average pages printed per user; and colour email and web printing.
For the first of these, average job size, there has been little change since 2015 (3.69 pages compared to 3.56 pages in 2017), which Print Audit says shows “there is still plenty of room for smaller network print devices in most offices.”
Next, Print Audit’s blog reveals that duplex printing has risen by 11 percent since 2015, to 31 percent last year, which “likely tells us that people are making better use of the functions and capabilities of their devices.” Print Audit adds that by increasing duplex printing for non-customer facing jobs “can drive down total costs dramatically.”
A result that Print Audit admits to finding “surprising” is that “colour volume levels have remained fairly static”, going from 22 percent in 2015 to 21 percent last year. The blog attributes this consistency to “good management and cost reduction efforts.”
However, total colour spend is falling dramatically, from 42 percent in 2015 to just 10 percent in 2017, despite a rise in 2016 to 44 percent. The blog contends that this may be driven by lower colour printing volumes, and lower costs per page for colour printing as well.
The average pages per user metric, meanwhile, is again consistent, albeit with a slight drop between 2016 and 2017 – the average went from 3 pages per user in 2015, to 4 the following year, before dipping back down to 3 in 2017, as digital workflows and document management become more widespread – as Print Audit say, “automated digital business processes are clearly taking root and not going away.”
Finally, there was a sharp drop in colour email and web printing between 2016 and 2017, from 25 to 18 percent, although this leaves it more in line with 2015’s figure of 20 percent.
You can read the blog in full, here.
