Estimating in any print business can be a challenge, but inkjet users face a level of variability that users of other print technology don’t. Ink costs represent a large percentage of job costs, and the level of ink use varies widely. Any time you change the media for a job, you also change the level of ink consumption—sometimes by a little but often by a lot. Savvy inkjet users also have the ability to control costs by limiting ink usage according to the minimum needed to hit particular color targets. This makes understanding ink costs on each job an important part of the estimating process.

In a recent Inkjet Insight survey of production inkjet users, 79% of respondents considered the ink estimating process to be important or very important to their overall estimating process. More than half (54%) of respondents indicated that they run more than half of new jobs through their estimating software, and 81% indicated that there were particular types of jobs where ink estimating has helped them compete more effectively. However, not everyone follows best practices with ink estimating.  More than a quarter (28%) of respondents indicated that they perform ink estimating on fewer than 10% of jobs. We dug further to find the reasons why.

Survey responses included participants who reported working with a wide range of OEMs including Canon, Durst, EFI, Fujifilm, HP, Kodak, Konica Minolta, Kyocera, MCS, Monotech, Ricoh, RISO, Screen, Xerox and others. Many participants had presses from more than one inkjet OEM and some used more than one ink estimating tool. The survey also represented companies across application segments including direct mail, commercial marketing collateral, transaction print, books, catalogs, magazines, signage and display, packaging, labels and newspapers. The majority of respondents used inkjet for more than one type of work.