Answering the Outsourcing Question
In his latest blog entry, Ray Chambers goes into some of the excuses put forward to justify closing an in-plant. "One frequently used excuse is the cost of new equipment and the organization’s inability or unwillingness to modernize," he notes. "Investing in printing equipment drains resources that would otherwise be invested in 'core business processes,' or so the argument goes."
But after those organizations shut down the in-plant, they never see the large reductions in print spending that they had expected. Why? Because printing is budgeted at the department level, he writes. And if they depend on print to do their jobs, they'll still need to print. But without an in-plant or a skilled print buyer, their only options are higher-cost copiers or desktop printers, or navigating the print-buying maze on their own.