What is a Managed Print Service?

I get asked this question regularly and its a good one to ask as there is a lot of misunderstanding about what a Managed Print Service (MPS) is and what it is actually for. If you asked ten different providers what they think MPS is I have no doubt that you will get ten different answers.

So with so much confusion how do you differentiate between providers?

A good place to start is to ask your current provider to describe exactly how their MPS will benefit your business and their answers will tell you whether they are in tune with the needs of your business and whether they fundamentally understand what a genuine Managed Print Service is actually for.

Here are some of the key areas upon which your provider should be focused:

1. They should be telling you how their MPS will lift the burden of supporting your printers from internal resource.

2. They should be telling you that their solution will expose and minimise the main costs of running a printer fleet, which are not the devices themselves, but the hard to determine administration and IT support costs.

3. They should be speaking about how they will remove cost from your business through document output and user controls.

4. They should be talking about working with you to define a Print Policy.

5. They should be talking about how their solution delivers cost control and transparency.

6. They should be showing you how their reports will detail their own performance versus Service Level Agreements.

7. They should be talking about deploying print suppressing technology.

8. They should be talking about how they will manage and adapt to your changing and evolving needs.

A genuine Managed Print Service will be delivering of this and more besides, its all about the focus upon removing cost, improving productivity, providing transparency and the ability to stay on touch with and adapt to your changing requirements.

So if all your provider wants to talk about is how toners are dispatched or consumables are routed or how long it will take for an engineer to be on site, (although these questions do need to be answered), then perhaps you will be asking yourself whether its not just the printers that need upgrading?

If you would like to learn more why not contact me directly at [email protected]