Wirth Consulting

For in-depth print and business-process workflow research and insight

Office Printing By the Numbers – Winners and Losers by Vertical Segment

by · Published · Updated

Print Audit’s West McDonald takes a deep dive into who’s printing – and who’s not – following up on a previous report last year examining office-printing trends.

Print Audit’s first report indicated that average pages printed per user were down from 2015 to 2016, but color printing for email and Web pages are on the rise.

In this new report, Print Audit digs deeper into industry vertical segments such as education, finance, legal, and manufacturing to see what the data tells us about opportunities and challenges in each. Some verticals have stronger “persistent pockets” of printing, while others are seeing page decreases per user in steep decline.

First, are notable overall trends:

⇩ Overall volumes per user are down dramatically in all vertical segments except financial and medical.
⇩ Overall total color print spending versus monochrome spending are down for all vertical segments except education and legal.

Printing habits in some verticals “remain persistent,” or are on the rise in some vertical segments, while experiencing dramatic declines in others. Here are some observations for the biggest winners and losers from 2015 to 2016:

Winners:

Medical: Daily pages per user increased by nearly 118 percent.
Education: Increased total color print spending versus monochrome spending by a whopping 85 percent.

Losers:

Government: A 55-percent decrease in pages per user.
Financial: A 52-percent decrease in color printing versus monochrome print spending.

In the following, Print Audit looks at some of the most important vertical segments for office-equipment dealers. For each segment, Print Audit details duplex, percent color in email and Web-page printing, average pages per user, and color versus monochrome print spending:

Large Enterprise:

⇧ Duplex: An increase of 2 percent in duplexing pushing to 10 percent total.
⇧ Percent of Total Color Output From Email and Web Pages: A dramatic increase from 23 percent to 38 percent.
⇩ Average Daily Pages Per User: Decreased from 6 pages to 4.5 pages.
⇩ Percent Total Color Printing Costs: Down from 40 percent to 31 percent.

Education:

⇩ Duplex: A decrease of 11 percent in duplexing down from 50 percent to 39 percent total.
⇩ Percent of Total Color Output From Email and Web Pages: A decrease from 25 percent to 24 percent.
⇧ Average Daily Pages Per User: Increased from 13 pages to 20 pages.
⇧ Percent Total Color Printing Costs: Up from 27% to 50%.

Medical:

⇩ Duplex: A decrease down from 20 percent to 17 percent total.
⇩ Percent of Total Color Output From Email and Web Pages: A decrease from 26 percent to 19 percent.
⇧ Average Daily Pages Per User: Increased from 17 pages to 37 pages.
⇩ Percent Total Color Printing Costs: Down from 51% to 26%.

Legal:

⇔ Duplex: Zero duplex for both years!
⇔ Percent of Total Color Output From Email & Web Pages: Very low at 5 percent for both years.
⇩ Average Daily Pages Per User: Decreased from 83 pages to 79 pages.
⇧ Percent Total Color Printing Costs: From 50% to 51%.

Government:

⇔ Duplex: Steady at 38 percent for both years.
⇧ Percent of Total Color Output From Email & Web: An increase from 12 percent to 16 percent.
⇩ Average Daily Pages Per User: Dramatic decrease from 33 pages to 15 pages.
⇩ Percent Total Color Printing Costs: Down from 56 percent to 52 percent.

Financial:

⇩ Duplex: A decrease, down from 12 percent  to 7 percent total.
⇧ Percent of Total Color Output From Email & Web: An increase from 22 percent to 27 percent.
⇧ Average Daily Pages Per User: Increased from 18 pages to 21 pages.
⇩ % Total Color Printing Costs: From 66 percent to 32 percent

Print Audit’s McDonald notes that “The office imaging space is changing dramatically, and depending on your perspective, that is a good thing or a bad thing. The trends for end-user customers are positive, but as dealers, they are very negative, at least for those continuing to use CPP (Cost Per Page) as their only option. For those offering SBB (Seat Based Billing), the trends are positive for both customers AND dealers!”

Those interested can further insight into office-printing trends registering for free for seven-day access to Print Audit’s Assessment Insight dashboards here.

More Resources