The debate surrounding the causes and effects of global warming has significantly increased the social consciousness of our interaction with the environment. From mandated municipal recycling programs all the way up to Fortune 500 companies, individuals and companies are beginning to think about how "going green" can translate into more--well, green.

It's interesting, then, to see how business processes that historically have been rather consumptive--such as any business's printing demands--are adapting to a business world that is increasingly conscious of that fact that it, too, has to live in the "real" world.

For example, companies dealing with the need to print and mail monthly billing statements or invoices (most notably credit card companies and other financial institutions) have made significant strides advancing the concept and implementation of "paperless statements" and electronic billing.

Paper statements are resource-intensive. They must be printed, folded, and stuffed into envelopes which then must be sealed and delivered to the post office, and that's all assuming everything goes perfectly. You can see how a printer failure like a print spool error is just one thing that can go wrong in an entire series of processes, and a failure at any point in the series would negatively impact delivery times and possibly lead to customer dissatisfaction.

Ineffective Print Management Drains Resources

Some companies have even experienced truly staggering resource hemorrhages due to inappropriate print management. There's an interesting case study available at the Plus Technologies website (entitled "Distribution of Invoices…") about such an experience. A company found that neither their operating system's native print spool manager nor the software they used to create invoices was capable of dividing their invoice print job.

This meant if an invoice needed to be reprinted for any reason, the entire batch had to be reprinted. Can you imagine? If a batch contained 500 invoices, all 500 would have to print if the customer requested another copy of an invoice. An entire ream of paper for one invoice! Someone within the accounting department then would have to sift through the invoices for the one that needed to be mailed again, wasting man-hours and then throwing away the superfluous 499 pages.

Waste on that level is not only harmful from a financial point of view, but in this day and age it is simply environmental irresponsibility. Of course, the company experiencing this also found this situation to be unacceptable and searched for a print management solution that would provide print flexibility.

Print Spooler Software Offer Versatility

Advanced server-side print management solutions provide that flexibility, and in this particular case study, it allowed the business to provide their customer base with the option of receiving statements and invoices by mail, fax or email.

The integration of OM Plus occurred relatively seamlessly: The invoices are still batch printed using the company's normal invoicing software just as they were before the print management implementation. Basically, when the invoicing software sends out the batch print job, the print management software spools the job. In this case, OM Plus then divides the print job into individual files according to invoice number. (Recall that they did have this capability before, causing them to print hundreds of invoices even if they only needed one.)

From there, the printer management software determines the customer's preferred delivery method by comparing the name on the invoice to a database of customer preferences. Invoices which are to be mailed are printed, and invoices to be delivered electronically are converted from PCL (printer command language) to Adobe PDF files by the print management software. Finally, OM Plus sends the PDFs to a fax or email file server for immediate electronic delivery.

Through this example one can see how a relatively minor operational adjustment can save hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper from being either wasted or needlessly sent through the mail. While this is only a very small step towards decreasing a company's environmental impact, it is becoming an increasingly wise business move once you crunch the numbers including increased efficiency, decreased expenditures on postage, and reduced use of supplies like paper, ink and toner.