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Shared Printing

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by nebit

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Hello,

I would love some input on shared printing. I work in an organization where each user has a printer on the desktop. There is no standardization of of model/brand. There is no shared printing at all.

I have come from environements where shared printing was ALL that a user had access to except in certain situations.

I am really wanting to move users at my current employment over to a similar solution. However I am being met by strong rejection by users. I would love to receive some input on how to think through making this decision.

The main reason I am meeting rejection is security.

There are a good number of users who print very confidential items which cannot be seen by other staff members. Their repsonse to shared printing is that other staff members can and would be able to get to their prints if printing across the hall.

Can anyone suggest some solutions to this problem? I understand you can do secure printing with PIN codes ..etc what about other ideas?

Also the convience/lost productivity is another constant gripe that I hear from users.

The main reason I am pushing for centralizing printing within our offices is because that of support. I am the only IT guy for a multi-office environement (multiple towns) with about 100 users. The possibility of hiring more staff is out of the question, and I am expected to support printers/anything techie in all locations. By moving to shared printing I can focus my support onto one machine per office and/contract out that support. I understand there are many bussiness factors involved in making this decision however I am not going to get into cost per prints with this. ?? or should I??

Blah, but I am having a hard time selling this idea to users. I apologize if this is a rant... but would love comments and input on this.

Thanks all

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by oldefar

The problem you are facing is fairly common. The user base deals in 5 currencies - time, money, security, knowledge, and prestige. Your solution is taking away their time and perhaps prestige and most likely the money it saves goes to a different level at the company. Net loss to the users.

What is needed is a way for the users to get a net gain in the currency aggregate by implementing your idea. Possible approaches might include having the user budgets finance the cost of these desktop printers. Now an idea to reduce that cost is a gain for them. Another approach is to gently guide them to coming up with the same idea on their own - net gain in prestige. The time issue is tough, but sometimes you can over emphasise the impact and value of it in their favor, and this allows them to down play it. In short, by being on their side they eliminate the time issue for you.

Just some thoughts. Good luck.

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