State of the Union for MPS

             Because I have been in the industry for so long, I am often asked by much younger and less experienced colleagues what are my thoughts on the future of print or MPS.

Our industry has changed quite a bit since I started and I am here to tell you that it is alive and well because of our ability and willingness to change.

In the late 80’s when I started it was the common practice to do a manual walk through of customer locations carrying cheat sheets to menu instructions on how to pull meter reads of all of the different manufacturers that were there. We also either asked for or drew diagrams of where the printers were and talk to the end users about how they used their printers and what they wanted their printer to do. Did they want or need color and then most importantly get them to agree on the print samples that we showed them which was most like what they printed on a regular basis. We also would look for the supply cabinet and inventory what they had in there, keep track of what was out of date and all of the different brands and models, did they have toner in the cabinet for printers that was not on our list? Then it was off to purchasing to get copies of invoices for toner and what they paid for it.

This was just the start of our analysis. For many of us this is how we learned Excel as we would spend many hours and in most cases nights working on entering data. You had to take the print samples they agreed to was their avg coverage and what they paid for toner to arrive at a cost per page. Back then, our goal was to replace desktop printers with MFP’S as that is how you cost justified the much higher cost of the equipment.

We have come a long way baby! The DCA tools that we have today and what they are able to do has drastically changed the way that we capture cost and devices on the network, but we still need to do walk throughs so we can capture devices not on the network.

I will not go through the same detail as where we were but will instead talk about where are now.

In today’s MPS, the hottest trend is walk in and take over if you are just an MPS provider. I say that because if you are providing IT services or Managed Services that will not fly. The CPI “Cost Per Impression” for A4 or desktop printers has dropped drastically since I started in the industry. If your only strategy for winning new business is your CPI is less than what they pay today, you have a losing strategy for keeping those customers as there will always be someone else willing to give away margin to win new customers.

Seat based billing is another hot trend and looks to bridge the gap between a CPI or flat rate “all you can eat” and software license fees. In most cases large organizations are relying on their IT departments to make the decisions on who they use to provide MPS solutions and they are used to paying by the seat for software so it makes sense.

That brings us to where I think the future is for our industry. We have to realize and demonstrate to our prospects and customers that we are talking about much more than simply a piece of hardware to print a simple document. We hear every day about security threats to our network, hacking into networks, ransom ware etc. What we don’t hear every day but is a real threat is internal threats.

There are many internal threats that exist, either intentionally or none intentionally. It can be as simple as someone bringing a document on a USB device to print something out not realizing that their viewing of some headline story or latest trend contained a virus that infected their pc and also the document they saved on that USB Drive therefore spreading that virus to the network at work when they open it to print to Identity theft by employees.

There was a recent story here in Dallas where I am where an employee of a public hospital was convicted of identity theft of patients when they checked into the hospital.

So you can see, just turning off the USB drive will not be complete protection for your customer or their customers. Since we are providing the printers shouldn’t we also discuss with our customers how we will protect their network when we install them? A lot of these devices are multi-functional devices that does so much more than print. These devices are a conduit for communication within the company and also their customers.

We hear of mobile print, follow me printing and secure print. That is yesterday’s news or is it? It is amazing to me how many printers are used in walk in take overs that are 10-year-old technology that doesn’t come close to providing the firmware security required for today’s threats.

If you want to survive and thrive in today’s MPS you better have solutions for the complex world, we live in.

I recently attended the Southeast BTA show in New Orleans and there was a panel of Millennial’s discussing their thoughts on our industry. One of the three panelists was born into the industry but the other two decided to come into our industry as a career. I am as guilty as everyone my age on saying how scared I am of having these Millennial’s in control so it did my heart good to see this.

We need to be able to integrate into our customers’ software and understand what the goals of the organization is. We are in a much faster paced environment than ever before and technology is where we are and where we are going because of that. You need to be able to provide a customized solution for your customers if you want to win on more than just price. Price is not a sustainable business plan. We will continue to see consolidation in our industry from dealerships being acquired to mergers of OEM’S. This is due in some part to our unwillingness to embrace change and adapt.

Our future is bright if you are an ambassador of change and embrace that we are much more than marks on paper. It is a proven fact that yes, holding a piece of paper in your hand and having something tangible to hold onto and read is much more of an experience than just reading a tweet is still today. 

Nelson Everette Senior Target Account Manager Lexmark, and CO-Chair Standards and Best Practices Committee MPSA.