Photocopier

Key things to evaluate copier machines, pre-purchase
After you have assessed your requirements and narrowed your choice to two or three printers how do you take a decision to choose the best copier that suits your business requirements?

Here are some considerations to help you make a decision:

Productivity
The investment in a photocopier must be able to measurably boost your productivity in order to justify the cost involved. Speed, network connectivity, paper handling, multi- functions and volume capacity are features you need to evaluate closely when comparing copiers to ensure you get more work done within short time frames.

Some other productivity measures you can consider when comparing copier machines are:

• Time spent doing non-productive tasks such as: changing cartridges, retrieving copies, trying to learn to use the copier, etc.
• Time lost if the response of the machine is slow—some machines take a long time to warm up before they are ready to start giving out copies.
• Time required to complete mundane tasks such as collating or binding documents.

Costs
Apart from the cost of the machine you also need to assess other costs that you are most likely to incur such as:

• Copier consumables: Paper, toner, cartridges, maintenance kits etc.
• Maintenance: Service visits and required technical assistance.
• Hardware: Print servers, additional memory etc.
• Software: Installing required software.
• Training: Training users to operate the device.

Reality check
You may also want to check how a particular copier device operates in your office environment. Here are some ways to conduct a reality check:

• You can ask the dealer to demonstrate the efficacy of the copiers you have chosen at your office or check the efficiency of the copier at the dealer’s outlet.
• Test the copier with tasks you are most familiar with or among those commonly carried out in your office. This will help you understand the efficiency of the machine and compare the output with your current quantity and quality of output.
• A demonstration can also help assess the speed, colour output, capacity etc.