According to a national research firm, the average K12 school district produces 15 to 25 pages per student per day - including documents produced onsite and through commercial means. Anyone curious as to what these pages cost? Well, most analysts would agree the average-cost-per-page in an education environments is somewhere around $0.02 to $0.04 cents per page, depending whether it is produced on a copier or printer. The figure is based on total operating cost, which includes expense such as electricity, real estate space, acquisition cost, bank financing, supply consumables, service and paper.

Although a few cents doesn’t seem like much, copier and printer costs quickly add up. A district with a 10,000 student population will spend $540,000 (15 pages per student) to $900,000 (25 pages per student) annually, just to provide copying and printer services.

The good news is there are multitude steps administrators can take, simple or complex, to reduce document output. In fact, reducing total output by just one page-per-student-per-day equals an annual savings of $36,000 to $72,000 - a target that can be easily attained in most districts.

So look around your school district and determine what steps you can take to reduce excess copies and prints. Chances are very real you could save tens of thousands of dollars. We suggest you read Hannah Recla’s post titled 14 Ideas for Reducing Paper Usage in Copiers and Printers. It offers several, east to implement suggestions to will help your district reduce the number of pages-per-student-per-day to achieve real savings.

When you are ready to receive bids from suppliers or vendors for copiers/printers, there are a number of options.

Companies can put out a Request for Information (RFI), Request for Proposal (RFP) or a Request for Quotation (RFQ). Each has its place, depending on the organization’s level of expertise surrounding the copier/printer industry and their overall document output strategy.

The choice is also based on the level of understanding the organization has about its standards, needs, and desires. Let’s take a look at each one, and then I’ll give you our advice after being involved in over $100,000,000 in copier and printer acquisitions over the last 17 years.

The Request for Information (RFI)

A Request for Information (RFI) is used to collect information from suppliers related to their capabilities, and is usually used as an information gathering process to identify suppliers and build a Request for Proposal (RFP) or Request for Quotation (RFQ).

The Request for Proposal (RFP)

A Request for Proposal (RFP) is used to gather proposals on specific commodities or services. It invites creativity and innovation from the suppliers regarding their response, which may be used in the analysis to select the winning supplier. The risk is that the RFP may fail to capture consistant information from suppliers,hampering the decision making process.

The Request for Quotation (RFQ)

A Request for Quotation (RFQ) is used to gather proposals on specific products or services. It typically involves price per item, payment terms, quality level per item and contract length. The RFQ includes detailed specifications of the items/services to force suppliers to provide more accurate quotes that are directly comparable. One main component of the Request for Quotation is that the specifications can be used as legal binding documentation for the suppliers.

What should you use to acquire copiers and printers?

Experience suggests that the more specific you can be in the initial bidding process, the more likely the supplier will provide their best offer first, reducing the need for re-bidding and nearly eliminate the need for end-of-procurement negotiation. This points directly to the use of an RFQ.

Five tips for creating a Request for Quotation for Copiers/Printers.

1. Do a complete objective assessment every time. Without complete, objective information, you won’t know your true needs and won’t be able to be specific enough in writing your RFQ to fully take advantage of its benefits.
2. Set your strategic, operational, and device-level standards yourself. Knowing what your organization wants and needs from your document output system will allow you to set quality levels and expectations, which suppliers will respond to in your RFQ. If suppliers are asked to help set standards, 10 times out of 10 the standards will help that supplier win the bidding process in some way. Set these yourself!
3. Issue your RFQ in a format that forces comparable supplier responses. The more you are able to ask questions and get responses in a yes/no/no, but manner, the easier the analysis of the responses will be.
4. Make the winning supplier’s bid legally binding. BUYER BEWARE: Supplier contracts are structured to eliminate your ability to make their responses legally binding — they also include clauses to negate most of what you negotiated with them through the buying process. DON’T SIGN THEIR CONTRACT! Write your own, and make sure you tie their RFQ response into the final documentation!
5. Manage your copier/printer environment to the quality levels the supplier agreed to. A legally binding Request for Quote (RFQ) is the number one way to achieve control over your suppliers and your document output system. If you don’t pay attention, there’s a good chance that you won’t get what the supplier agreed to. Equipment and supplier performance will slip, costs will increase, and a whole host of other issues may arise that are easily avoidable if you are paying attention.

If you have any questions, or need any help implementing any of these tips or deciding which option you will use to get bids from copier or printer suppliers, feel free to give us a call. We’ve been helping companies all across the United States for 17 years achieve lower costs, better equipment and supplier performance, and reduce the risk of copying and printing contracts. We’ll be glad to help!

NOTE: The descriptions of Request for Information (RFI), Request for Proposal (RFP), and Request for Quotation (RFQ) are based on descriptions found in Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com).

In a time when all purchasing decisions are difficult at best, Hallsville I.S.D. found the process of going out for Copier proposals almost painless, thanks to Rod Davis and Optimizon. Optimizon made the task so much easier by providing the expertise and the online proposal process.

Optimizon, a professional services firm, provided expertise for copier acquisition. Their professional staff helped HISD create, execute, and manage the process, while ensuring that we were asking the right questions and getting the right answers.

The district discovered that Optimizon’s easy-to-use services eliminated the risk and time-constraint issues associated with our copier project. Here was a professional organization - on our side! Mike Stanfield, technology director stated, “I was impressed that here was someone who did not sell copiers, someone who is vendor neutral, who had only our best interests at heart.”

Read the rest of this post here: http://www.hisdtech.org/opt.html

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The 95% and 98% Uptime Guarantee for Copiers. Sounds good… Gives me warm fuzzy feelings… But what does it really mean? A friend of mine told me that people shouldn’t be allowed to do math publicly so please bear with me for a minute. An average month has 4.33 weeks. An average month has 173.2 business hours. If we multiply 173.2 hours by the 95% Uptime Guarantee, we find that the equipment is guaranteed to be operational 164.5 hours per month. Continuing this train of thought, if we subtract 164.5 hours from 173.2 hours we find the 95% Uptime Guarantee means the device will be unusable 8.66 hours per month and still meet the Uptime Guarantee. If your prospective supplier is offering a 98% Uptime Guarantee then the device will be inoperable about 3.5 hours per month. (more…)

We hear this question often, and the answer is: Yes. If you asked your vendor to include certain terms and conditions while you were negotiating a new contract, put those terms in writing and ask the vendor to sign your contract before you sign theirs. Then, when you do sign your vendor’s contract, make sure none of the terms of their contract negate the terms in your contract. If you find any that do, ask the vendor to strike them out and initial the changes. (more…)