How could Laser Printers Possibly be Faster than my High Speed Impact Printer?

In multi-part forms, it depends on the number of pages versus the speed of the laser printer. And even if the speed doesn’t completely add up, the other benefits of producing high quality output, eliminating the hidden costs of pre-printed forms, thereby increasing workflow efficiency and corporate image far outweigh any reduction in speed that may be perceived.

Increasing Efficiency and Productivity, Lowering Costs

With no change to your current host, there are countless ways that switching to printing on laser printers from impact printers increases efficiency, productivity and lowers costs. Here a bevy of examples:

Documents once printed on impact printers with pre-printed forms are now printed on high quality, PostScript® printers on cut sheet paper, for huge cost savings. Dramatic increases in efficiency and cost savings are realized:

• Reduce the time a labor spent changing over forms.
• Eliminate forms wasted when switching forms.
• Eradicate shipping costs of getting forms from a warehouse to each location.
• Wipe out storage of forms and consequently the need to throw away obsolete forms when there is a change to the form.
• Automatically and simultaneously archive as a highly searchable PDF. If a paper copy is not needed, labor cost savings are still realized from no longer having to burst or decollate.
• Add any industry standard barcodes for workflow and tracking efficiencies - automatically and on the fly. Print to multiple printers to eliminate printer traffic jams during batch processing.

Electronically route departmental copies to the appropriate departmental printer, with no human intervention, print:

• A customized cover letter with the sales reps signature
• Pick tickets
• Shipping labels for any merchandise that needs to be sent.
• For high volumes of documents to be mailed, have them print in pre-sorted order for huge postal savings.

Print on demand is the industry "buzzphrase" for printing what you want, when you want it, where you want it. When applying this concept to pre-printed forms, the list of hard and soft costs of forms comes to the forefront. When printing the forms (along with the data) on an as needed bases, inherently there is an elimination of obsolete forms. If a form needs to be changed, simply open it in the design tool and make the necessary changes. The form is changed real time, for the very next print run. Since the forms are stored on the printer's hard drive, flash or RAM, there is no storing, shipping or physically changing of those old pre-printed forms.

As previously mentioned, forms are wasted during long print runs when a print operator chooses to use a full box of forms instead of the box the had only one third left, so they will not have to add new forms - creating waste here.

Flexibility and Adaptability to Latest Technology

The open architecture of the Suite allows flexibility and adaptability to the latest technology. PlanetPress will print to any PostScript® printer, which is important in the event there are multiple printers by different manufacturers. This is often the case when incorporating output management with remote printing.

Much of the time the output of impact printers are applications that are being mailed. Get the most out your mailing dollar by incorporating personalized messages, graphics and business graphs. The more information you have on your customer, the more personalized you can make it. The sky is the limit here.

There are several benefits to the customer of personalized documents. Industry experts say that variable data printing results in a combination of effects. Customers can achieve faster time to market, more ways to generate revenue, higher productivity, better customer service, consistency in message across media, more accurate and up to date information and reduced costs.

It has been shown that customers respond more, as well as faster and in larger numbers, when they are only receiving information that is relevant to them. In addition, the customer is receiving the information faster as there is no need for kitting as personalized books are printed with the needed information. Including information on like or related products, when a customer might not have thought of seeking more information on their own, can generate additional revenue. Imagine how important your end customers will feel if unwanted information is filtered out for them. Envision how well a customer service department will look when the Customer Service Representatives can call up on their screen the exact invoice on which the end customer is calling in with a question. These are just to name a few examples.

Often times with impact printer applications, they are batch processed. To reduce or eliminate traffic jams at the printer, jobs can be set up to run at night and the print job can be split and sent to multiple printers.

There is almost always a cost savings from going from pre-printed forms to cut sheet paper. This is especially true with complicated multi-part forms, which can cost up anywhere from $0.25 to $1.25 per form!

For companies that are shipping products, we already mentioned that you can simultaneously print the pick tickets and shipping labels simultaneously to the invoices, but what if you could add any industry standard bar code for tracking? Think about the increases in efficiency here. It would be easy to track and route shipments.

If the printing application is printed in high volumes is to be mailed, one should think about the postal savings of printing them in pre-sorted order for maximum postal savings.

Adding color to documents has been shown to increase the readers' attention. If sending product or service information, retention is increased. And when using color to group ideas together, as well as business graphs and other instances of relaying information, color has been proven to increase comprehension as well.

Impact printers are used for only those applications with pre-printed forms. Moving to a laser printer means that the printer can be used for other printing applications as well, usually front office printing. One printer can now handle printing your Microsoft® Word and PowerPoint presentations, as well as invoices, checks, reports in addition to replacing the multi-part forms.