The Gartner Research Company states that enterprises will spend between one and three percent of its revenue on document output.

With the myriad of printing devices in need of replacement consumables on a daily basis, managing and controlling print costs has become difficult to do, and many corporates feel they are throwing money down a bottomless pit.

Corporates have been forced to use difficult and intricate processes to ensure their IT consumables spend, remains under some form of control. However certain problems still persist:

• Procurement departments place a large amount of small value orders on a daily basis, for ink and toner cartridges. This is both costly and
  time consuming.
  
  
• Corporates are forced to deal with a large number of consumable suppliers. This results in a large number of invoices, with similar items
  being charged at varying prices – budget control and allocation of costs becomes very difficult in this environment.
  
  
• Procurement stores and stationary departments are forced to carry a large amount of consumables, which often become obsolete when the printers are replaced. This can result in the consumables being written off.
  
  
• Most users carry additional consumables at their workstation, because they cannot afford to wait for their procurement departments to procure their consumables through the lengthy tender or RFG processes. Storing spare consumables is not only costly, but also poses a security risk,
  as many users have the same printers at home and consumables often go missing.

THE WAY FORWARD

The Cartridge Company and Advanced Channel Technologies (A.C.T.), the leading distributor of the most well respected brands of printer, storage
and backup consumables in South Africa, has formulated a solution, which allows The Cartridge Company to assist their corporate customers to:

• Genuinely manage and review their consumables costs on an ongoing basis,


• Track and assess consumables usage throughout the entire organization; and


• Reduce the need for the bulk storage of consumables while supplying users anywhere in South Africa at a uniform price.


• Simply called Strategic Sourcing Solutions, it requires the involvement of the corporate’s consumables reseller of choice and furthermore, empowers The Cartridge Company to add a substantial amount of value.


• It allows the corporate to centralize the procurement of consumables, (to ensure that control is maintained), while providing an unmatched service to its users with the delivery of consumables directly to the users desktop.
  

The most obvious benefits for the corporate are cost savings that are delivered through:

• The ongoing management and reviewing of printer consumable costs,


• Minimizing theft of consumables in the organization,


• Reducing the need for bulk storage of consumables,


• Nationwide price parity.


• Using A.C.T.’s nationwide reach and efficient logistics infrastructure, customers are assured of having their orders fulfilled and delivered to
  their location of choice, within the timeframe stipulated in the relevant SLA(Service Level Agreement).


• Lower Administration on the consumable spend.

AN HOLISTIC VIEW OF YOUR CONSUMABLES EXPENDITURE

The biggest benefit, however, is the ability of the solution to provide the corporate with an holistic overview of what its consumables spend is on a monthly basis. It also informs them of where those consumables are being used in the organization, and identify any anomalies in their consumables usage.

Gartner Research: “Enterprises that actively manage their document output will be able to save between ten percent and thirty percent of their
recurrent spending”.

Ultimately, the solution takes strain off the department, allowing them to:

• Focus on delivering the service level commitments promised in the solution to the organization.


• Focus is given to reducing overall consumable spend by identifying the most expensive printer devices in the organization.


• Investigating the replacement of those devices with the ones that are less expensive to maintain.

Pen-Rite believes there is no better way to manage the consumables spend within any organization today, and this model presents the best possible form of value added service a reseller in the consumables market can offer to its clients.

QUALIFYING THE CORPORATE CUSTOMER

• Medium to large corporate, public enterprise or government customers,


• Minimum consumable spend of R 300 k per annum,


• The need for national price parity exists,


• 80% of consumable spend on below brands:


• HP


• LEXMARK


• CANON


• VERBATIM


• EPSON


• BROTHER


• OKI