Your business could be printing better – it all starts with a print audit

Have you ever really thought about how the way you print could be impacting your business? Many businesses view printing as a siloed process that has little effect on other areas – but ignoring its impact could be costing you money, putting you at risk of security breaches, and impacting overall productivity.

Luckily, there is a way to assess and understand the way printing influences your wider business. The answer is a print assessment – and Brother is here to make it easy for you.

Breaking down the detail: What exactly is a print audit service?

A print management assessment is a comprehensive, non-intrusive assessment of an organisation’s print infrastructure, usage patterns, and costs. It helps businesses understand their printing environment and identify inefficiencies that lead to unnecessary expenses.

How does a print audit work?

A managed print assessment will look at all aspects of your printing, but it can vary on the size of your organisation and the complexity of your printing requirements.

Typically, a print audit will look at:

1. Security

Data protection is a key part of a print assessment. 31% of organisations experienced a print-related security breach in the past year, highlighting a tangible risk to sensitive business data. (Source: IDC Worldwide Security Spending Guide, 2025). Your audit will look at the potential breach areas in your printing processes at network, device and document level – ranging from the odd print out being left in a tray or documents regularly being printed over unsecured networks – before recommending solutions that can enhance security across your fleet.

2. Printing processes

Looking at your printing process gives an overview of how things currently run in your organisation, from who’s using your printers to your overall printing volume. This can help to spot areas of inefficiencies and find solutions to cut costs and limit printer downtime – just like we did for Helsby High School.

Amid spiralling costs and an underused network of 100 printers, we were able to cut the school’s print fleet from over 100 to just 52 high-speed mono and colour printers, alongside a print management system that offers a real-time audit trail for full visibility over printing and costs.

3. Supplies

We’ll assess how you approach your printer supplies. This includes everything from the way you procure them to their storage in your business – as well as any recycling process you currently follow. With Brother ultra-high yield toner cartridges typically printing up to 20,000 pages before needing replacing, we can help you with a solution that means fewer replacements, less intervention and lower storage requirements.

4. Organisational blind spots

Assessing your printing infrastructure as a whole will allow us to see if there are any areas which have been missed or could be improved. This is a process called balanced deployment, whereby devices are strategically placed to best suit people’s needs and demands.

For example, a marketing department may need to print and scan in colour, whereas someone in payroll may only need to print documents in black and white. Rather than risking security breaches with centralised printers, the marketing department can have their own colour multifunction device, while payroll can have a small, locked-down desktop mono laser printer.

Is it worth your while? Why your business should invest in a print audit

During print audits, we often uncover hidden issues around high printing costs, underutilised devices, security risks and excessive paper waste. These are areas where key improvements can be made, so following your managed print assessment, we’ll provide you with a breakdown of our key recommendations. Making these improvements could result in:

• Cost savings through optimised print workflows, resulting in everything from soft cost savings (like employee time), to more significant long-term savings (like reducing your supplies spend).
• Improved sustainability by reducing supplies over-ordering and offering a simple recycling process, as well as recommendations like pull printing to reduce the number of jobs that are never collected.
• Enhanced security with better document control and visibility.
• Increased productivity by streamlining print operations and removing any under-utilised devices.
• Proactive monitoring of printer performance, so we can spot any areas where behaviour changes and suggest adjustments accordingly. This way, you always have a solution that scales with you.
• Reduction in IT support allocated to print-related issues.

What does Brother’s print audit include?

Brother’s print auditing process will help us develop a proposal for hardware, software and services based on your business’ unique needs – without interfering with any of your current systems.

Our Services and Solutions team will conduct a rigorous asset audit, evaluating user productivity and current printing fleet infrastructure. The team will then design a sustainable, optimised, customised solution – which ensures the right printers are in the right place throughout your organisation.

Our audit investigates elements such as:

• Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) – taking into account the cost of the hardware and ongoing supplies and maintenance for the lifetime of your printer.
• Security requirements and print policies 
• User productivity and printer utilisation
• CSR policies and sustainability goals
• Your physical environment
• Your typical device users and their familiarity with systems
• Current levels of helpdesk / print support resource expended 

Ultimately, we’ll use all of these aspects to develop a solution that puts the right printers in the right places and minimises hidden costs - resulting in a more balanced approach.

Why Brother’s Managed Print Services (MPS) is the ultimate print optimisation solution

Brother MPS is a comprehensive yet flexible managed print service, built around the specific needs of your business – and is the natural next step after a print audit is completed.

Beyond auditing, Brother MPS offers ongoing monitoring, automated supply replenishment and proactive maintenance that will benefit your organisation every day. Leaving the management of your fleet to us frees up your time and staff resources, and helps you reduce the cost and complexity of business printing.

Find out more about Brother MPS here.

Get started: Book your print audit with Brother today

Your business printing could be better – and it all starts with Brother. Book your free print audit with our expert team, and we’ll start the process of improving all-things print across your organisation, together.

Book now.