What Is The Best Copier for a Growing Business?

Is your business growing? If so, are you concerned that the office equipment you purchase this year will not be adequate five years down the road? It is important to make educated purchasing decisions that will allow for substantial business growth. Otherwise, your company will waste a lot of time and money on major equipment that can’t keep up with your business’s growth and expansion. As you research copiers, there are three primary factors to consider: copier speed, cost per page, and the service agreement.

Speed consideration

If you already own a copy machine, you can get an accurate idea of your current volume by tracking your paper usage or referring to the machine’s counter. If you don’t own a copier, calculate the total expenses from outsourced copy jobs. To prevent overworking a copier, add a 15% buffer to your final estimate. It is important to be honest about your company’s features to prevent overspending. For example, you may want to print 40-page reports in less than one minute. However, is it really worth the extra expense for a 50-page-per-minute copier when a 30 page-per-minute machine will be just fine?

Cost per page

The frequently used terms for copier speed include cpm or copies-per-minute, ppm or page-per-minute, and opm or outputs-per-minute. All of these terms are used for the quantity of letter-sized pages that one machine can copy in a single minute at full capacity. Copiers are assigned a segment number according to speed. Copier speeds run from Segment 1’s 15 to 22 ppm to Segment 6’s 100 ppm or higher.

For most businesses, a copier in the Segment 2 to 4 range is ideal. These machines have a span of 20 to 50 ppm. Employees will likely be frustrated with the slow copy times that come with a Segment 1 machine, while Segment 5 and 6 machines are overkill for the average company. Unless you run an extremely large corporation or a print shop, you usually do not need the power that comes with a Segment 5 or 6 copier.

Service agreement

The average copier technician response time for the copier industry is four hours or less. As you browse copier vendors, you will often come across response time statistics. Many vendors claim that they have response times that are significantly less than this average. While times will vary for different vendors, some of them are low as one and a half hours. See what your current copier service agreement says; or if you are the market to purchase a new copier, be sure to read over the maintenance contract carefully.

As you assess cost and response time, keep in mind that the actual repair is just one portion of the response time. Technicians must also plan for their diagnosis time as well as travel. There are many situations where technicians must spend an extended length of time figuring out the cause of a particular copier problem before they are able to fix them.

Amarillo Copiers

UCI is a copier company in Amarillo, Texas that serves the entire Texas Panhandle. UCI is an extremely reliable and reputable copier company that works with a variety of small businesses, growing businesses and large, local companies. The professional support staff can help you determine what kind of copier will best serve your business’s needs as it develops and expands, keeping in mind your employees, business’s budget and average copier use. From there, they can customize a copier just for you. Contact UCI today to find out what copier will best suit you and your growing business.

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