Not every business will need managed print services. For example, if your print environment consists of just a couple of office copiers and a desktop printer or two, other service models like our Managed Cartridge would be a better option.
However, when a business struggles daily with issues like these, we can make a strong business case for our managed print services model:
With a good managed print services provider, every location of your business can save time, reduce complexity and immediately see better printer efficiency.
Why aren't printers managed if this is such a powerful strategy? Typically, decisions about a printer purchase or copier supplies are made in "silos". Office services handle the copier lease; procurement may be responsible for printing supplies, while IT buys the printers and owns supporting the printer fleet.
Different departments all have a say, but there's no single department 100% responsible for the printer budget. As a result, purchases of printers, supplies, and service requests are often uncoordinated and made without considering the company's overall needs.
Another reason behind poor print management is the sheer complexity of all the different printer devices and supply SKUs. It's a service and logistical nightmare. An established MPS provider brings knowledge of all the brands, including those you have and those you may need.
Finally, there’s a third reason too many business printers go unmanaged. Organizations lack a common metric to understand these costs. That’s why one of our recommendations is to implement a solution to measure inventory, volumes (by device), and costs (by device). This delivers a consistent, realistic picture of your print environment.
Many companies today have no idea what they spend on office printing, yet these costs are among the biggest unmanaged expenses in business today.
Does print management matter? According to print experts, printing costs are significant and growing. So, yes, printing is a significant expenditure, and for most companies, it's getting worse. There are two reasons for this:
To complicate matters, overall printing costs are difficult to quantify, since the true expenses of supplies, equipment, and support are often buried in different cost centers across the organization.
It’s quite common for each printer in a business to be purchased ad hoc by individuals from different departments out of their own budgets. This results in an explosion of unmanaged printers, many locally connected and out of sight from any kind of device management. This decentralized approach results in more makes and models from multiple manufacturers.
To further complicate matters, printer manufacturers constantly refresh their offerings, making it difficult for companies to standardize a brand of print devices over any extended period. The cost of managing a mixed printer fleet grows, as the number of vendors, makes, models, and toner cartridges multiplies.
Most businesses don't know the number of printers they have or the number of pages they're printing. Printers are easily bought and deployed, often without consideration of the capacity of the existing print fleet. Typically, printers are rarely placed to balance print volumes with the device's capacity. All of this leads to an ever-increasing cost of printing.
Uncoordinated purchases of print devices and toner often result in duplicate technology within a printer fleet. You may even bring on more equipment than is actually required to support the user community. This can be seen in departments with a monochrome copier right next to a color printer.
Driven by single-function technology (printers only print and copiers only copy), these relationships are a hangover from a bygone era and fail to leverage the vast array of multifunction printing device choices currently available.
Business print management tames your runaway printers and pages.
That's a good question and one that we usually answer with an assessment. As a managed print services provider, we see these symptoms all too often, and we know how to fix the problems behind them.
Our managed print services business model brings you the best hardware, software, and support solutions for your print environment.
If you're investigating managed print service providers, now you know more about why your business needs managed print and what a good MPS provider brings to your organization.
