Experts say that one of the best habits an SMB can get into is self-auditing. Indeed, medical innovation engineer John Derek Thompson, of DePuy Synthes, explains, “For every action you do, you should ask yourself: ‘How would this look to an auditor?’”

Thompson adds that for truly effective self-auditing, companies must ensure their staff and admins “maintain an auditor’s eye while carrying out tasks, rather than waiting to have it reviewed later.”

But how can SMB staff members, who are so often utterly unaware of their print and office IT spending, develop positive self-auditing skills that help their companies cut costs and avoid waste? With Samsung Printing’s wide range of solutions, software and hardware, would-be self-auditors will discover answers close at hand.

At the Core of Self-auditing

The idea of starting to audit your printing operations – keeping track of who uses your printers, what kind of tasks they perform, how much paper and toner you order and so on – might sound like a Herculean task for some admins and business owners.

But with the Usage Tracker Core, one of the five powerful modular solutions that make up Samsung’s Business 2.0 suite, admins will find themselves equipped with an intuitive interface that lets them stay up to speed with all of their printers’ outputs. The core allows admins to sort data into easy-to-understand reports, categorized by count, cost or date.

Armed with easy-to-understand data reports, admins will find that self-auditing is no longer quite so daunting. They may even feel they can go a step beyond – making calculations and forecasts about expenses in the months or years to come.

Usage Tracker Core also lets admins access real-time counts of devices’ print, copy, scan and fax tasks by printer or user, and instantaneously check on costs. If admins are too busy to monitor on a daily basis, Usage Tracker Core also offers customizable weekly or monthly email reports, for a quick and accessible overview.

Time Is Money

Empowering business owners and admins with solutions is only part of the self-auditing conundrum, however. Cutting down on tangible overheads like toner, paper and replaceables is all well and good. But what about the most valuable resource of all – your employees’ time?

There are few problems quite as irritating and time-consuming as having to deal with firmware and security updates on your office devices. Employees are often nonplussed about updates when their printers prompt them to make a choice. Some will choose not to install updates, while others will waste vital work minutes calling IT departments to ask if a certain update should be installed or not. In many cases, IT admins have to waste time walking around the office, manually updating each device in turn.

If your staff members are self-auditing their time properly, they will see the above as a major pain-point. Luckily, a couple of handy Smart UX Center apps let you do away with the lengthy processes outlined above.

With the Smart Update app, Smart UX Center-enabled Samsung multi-function printers automatically find and download new firmware updates. Samsung’s server provides downloads centrally, meaning your staff and admins get to use secure, up-to-date devices – without having to lift a finger.

And with the soon-to-be released Smart Security Manager app, which incorporates the international government-approved KNOX Samsung security platform, your admins and staff can also stop wasting their time on security update-related matters.

Fit for the Self-Auditing Fight

Auditing your print operations is a multifaceted task. It involves not only overheads management, but also thinking about how productive your employees are, and developing ways to let them use their time effectively.

But when you hand your employees the right tools, you empower their self-auditing efforts. And once your entire company learns how to self-audit every aspect of its operations, experts agree it will be fighting fight – and ready for a whole range of modern business challenges.