Morris Wallack Director, Presales support; HP Imaging and Printing Americas

“Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.”
-George Bernard Shaw

In my last post, I laid out a six-step process for building an effective strategy to move to a more managed print/copy/fax environment. Step three was “get a baseline of information to make the plan”.

When most people read step three - get a baseline of information- they think “do an assessment” or “do an audit”. Over the years a wide array of offerings from small to large companies has sprung up to fill that need. Many multifunction product vendors (HP included) offer assessment services to assist customers in figuring out the basics – what do I have, how much is it costing me and what should I do about it?

Q: How do you choose the right assessment for your company? Does it matter? How different can one assessment be from another?

A: It depends.

It depends on what decision you’re trying to make, how much information you need and, probably most importantly, who cares about the outcome.

For example, if the decision has already been made to make changes in the print/copy environment, then an assessment to make a “business case for change” would be an inappropriate use of time and/or money. On the other hand, if the challenge is on making the business case for change, it might be simple enough to use industry benchmarks or “back of the envelope” calculations to determine that your environment is woefully in need of improvement. Once a decision is made to change, the strategy and planning process needs information to make effective choices on priorities, key issues to address, and overall strategic intent.

Another thing to consider about assessments: many folks get the “paralysis by analysis” bug. Once they get their hands on some data, they want more data. How do you combat that syndrome? Define up front what decision needs to be made and what data is required by the decision-maker to make it. I’ve seen it go both ways-- people using too much data or too little data.

Three other common myths or widely-held beliefs about assessments that need discussion are:

Once I have the data from the assessment, I have a way to control my costs in the future.

False. Controlling costs is a management process that’s impacted by everything from who can spend money (can users expense personal printers?) to how much visibility one has to the costs being spent (how many location codes can toner expenses be allocated to?) . The data from an assessment can only directionally point to where cost savings can be found – but it can’t control anything. And to control costs over time, you’ll need a method to continually monitor them in an efficient manner.

If I do a larger scale assessment of many locations, my cost estimates will be more accurate and improve my plan to save money.

Possibly true, likely false. Many folks think that surveying many floors, buildings, and locations to collect more data about the print environment will reduce risk and uncertainty by closing a gap between assumptions and reality. In some well designed assessments, when the locations truly represent different business activities (e.g. a branch of a bank is different than the back office), then collecting representative data can help ensure good decisions are made with good data. On the other hand, if all the users do similar work (office applications, etc.) it’s likely the page volumes, costs per page, number of devices and other main cost drivers are similar, and thus collecting more data might be a waste. All this will do is create more work for someone to analyze data, take longer to get to insights and delay action. The longer that action is delayed, the more the opportunity to reduce costs is delayed.

For a simple overview of statistical sampling, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_%28statistics%29

For a deeper appreciation of non-sampling errors in surveys see: http://www.pollingreport.com/sampling.htm

If I pay an independent third party to do my assessment, I’ll get a better result than a free assessment from a vendor (or consultant).

True, false, or irrelevant. Quality doesn’t correlate to price in assessments. While some industry gurus submit that having independent consultants do assessments is preferred since they are not “pushing” an agenda, you really need to dig a little deeper before concluding one alternative (paid) is better than another (free, from vendor or others). Questions I’d encourage you to include:

• What methodology is being used?
• How robust is the analysis?
• What steps are taken to ensure quality data is collected?
• What resources or databases are used to compare results to industry norms?
• What tools are used?
• How much experience with the tools do the consultants have?
• How transparent are the calculations? Can I see them?
• Who owns the data?

These questions can lead to a better evaluation of what the outcomes might be independent of how much money is charged. The other consideration is how truly independent is a third party? What biases do they bring to the assessment and how would you know? In the public sector, it may be a requirement to have an independent organization do the assessment to comply with rules. That’s ok.

By the way there’s no such thing as a free lunch -- if the paid consultant doesn’t insist on your involvement, the outcome could be poor. Similarly, if the free assessment demands much of your time, that’s a cost too. Either way, there are costs of time, labor, and commitment to ensure good outcomes.

In summary, the better questions to ask are: “Are we creating value by engaging this group to help us get to where we want to go?” If the answer is yes, the next question is: “are the total costs of money, people time and resources worth it?”

As an HP employee, I think the approach we offer, of having a variety of assessments to meet different needs, makes a lot of sense. See HP’s website for more.

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