RUSSIA AND OUTSOURCING
28.10.2020
Outsourcing in print – Russian realities.
I’ve made an intentional error, by writing “Outsourcing in printing” instead of “Outsourcing of printing” in the headline. Some of our colleagues indeed write “Outsourcing in printing”. That’s an error, one should write “Outsourcing of printing”.
Outsourcing means external support of a process, in this case the process of printing of office or engineering documentation in an enterprise. Outsourcing of printing allows you to save your own time and that of your employees. Essentially, outsourcing of printing means servicing the customer’s equipment on copy-by-copy basis.
When you make a contract to outsource your printing, you pay only for pages you print. You no longer need to pay for procurement of cartridges, refilling of cartridges, repairs and monthly maintenance of your office equipment or procurement of spare parts.
A contractor who operates on the basis of an outsourcing contract has to repair your equipment promptly and according to high standards of quality. Promptly returning of your equipment to working condition and minimizing downtimes is in the best interests of an outsourcing company. Only that allows a contractor to gain profits and avoid losses.
If your printer or MFP is not printing, the contractor does not get money, this scheme is simple and convenient for both parties. Copy-by-copy service completely precludes corruption. Corruption and kickbacks become impossible for the following reasons:
• There is no direct sale of products, delivering not enough or delivering a wrong product is not possible, as equipment is already in your hands.
• Billing for more pages than were printed is not possible, as each plotter, printer or MFP has its own internal counter, which value cannot be increased, and can only be decreased by replacing its main board, which is an equivalent of replacing the device, and will change its serial number.
• If you don’t want employees to print for their private purposes, a printing device can be provided with the access control function.