Pull Printing is a solution designed to reduce print costs in an organisation and give users flexibility and choice about the machines they use. Typically pull printing software also includes the ability to use a cost recovery strategy within an organisation. This involves charging departments or setting limits for the pages they print, reducing management costs and helping to comply with environmental targets.
Some organisations deploy centralised print areas to strictly control print usage, and have methods to release the print jobs for each user. This can be as simple as entering a PIN code on the printer but more commonly magnetic and RFID swipe cards are used. New systems can use biometric technology where a fingerprint recognition device is used instead of a card reader saving the need to issue and manage cards. Being able to authenticate each user means you can rationalise single function devices and move towards multifunction units which can print, copy, scan and fax; giving access to users only the functions they are allowed to use.
Essentially when a user prints, the print job travels to a server awaiting retrieval. The user, when ready, walks to a printer they want to use and either enters a PIN code, swipes a card or uses a biometrics method. The print job is released from the server and sent to the desired printer where the document is printed. Some pull print solutions allow the user to choose to delete print jobs they don't want at the printer saving paper.
A new printer has been installed into an office supporting 30 employees. Normally it would take the IT department at least 3 hours of their time to manually install the new drivers onto 30 PCs, not to mention the disruption to the workforce. The introduction of Driver Deployment Wizard has transformed this task - the IT department can now deploy new drivers across the whole company in minutes and with less PC downtime.