Four Printing Pain Points Solved with MPS
We see printer-related pain points everywhere we go. Here are four common issues that can be solved with a well-implemented print management solution:
1. Printer Security
Printer security functions that reduce waste and meet compliance standards require your printers to be connected to your network. Any unsecured device on your network is a potential hazard to your IT security, so it's important to secure your printers from outside breaches.
Managed Print Services integrates security offerings that offer constant monitoring and instant notification of printer security breaches, so you can respond to a threat as soon as it appears. These offerings include:
- Printer security assessments
- Authentication controls to limit access
- Secure release solutions that eliminate abandoned print
- Constant, automatic monitoring of printer threats
Back to Top
2. Uncontrolled Print Costs
On average, companies spend three to four percent of their annual revenue on printing, but most organizations don't know where their print dollars are being spent. When analyzing the impact of even a single printer, it is important to consider every aspect:
- Initial purchase
- Supply orders
- Ongoing maintenance
- Cost and time of repairs
- Timing of eventual replacement
In a surprising number of companies, a different vendor (and/or internal department) handles each of these aspects of device management. This creates not only immediate costs, which are often difficult to gauge because they are not centrally tracked, but also the potential for expensive redundancies, missed orders, unnoticed toner scam attempts and unreasonably long down times.
It is possible to reduce printing costs by turning to a single vendor to service and support a your entire range of copiers and printers. This approach means you spend less time working with multiple vendors, and you centralize your printer fleet management. With possible document savings of 20 to 30 percent, you may find compelling return-on-investment data that makes investigating an MPS contract a worthwhile venture.
Back to Top
3. The IT Team Hates Dealing with Printers
Responsibility for copier and printer upkeep has crossed largely into the domain of the IT department. Why? Because these devices need to be connected to the network.
Taking over printer management means IT also has to understand what other functions each device offers in order to group users for access to the features they need. This requires that IT and operations communicate clearly (and often) about the needs and requirements of departments and individuals and to determine which machines would reside on the network and to create an overall strategy for the office print infrastructure.
Most IT teams don't have the time or the resources to maintain printers. And yet, they're burdened with the task. MPS will reduce the demand printers place on your IT team by taking printer-related issues off their plate so they can spend more time on mission critical tasks for your organization.
Back to Top
4. Too Much Waste
If not managed properly, a company’s printing habits create unnecessary ecological strain. With real-world strategies that make your company’s green goals line up with profit, print management programs are specifically designed to cut down on waste and improve efficiency, with a direct effect on your bottom line.
Managed Print Services has print tracking software that offers quick and easy ways to reduce and monitor your paper, supplies and print-related energy. Features like programmed sleep and wake modes for an entire printer fleet can create cost and energy savings literally overnight. These are just two examples of how printers can contribute significantly to a company’s green goals.
Back to Top
How the Process Works
Now that you know what MPS is, what does implementing it look like?
Step 1: Optimize Printers
In this stage, MPS specialists evaluate your current print environment and analyze it to help you better understand opportunities for consolidation of vendors and devices. This may include a walk though of your building(s) and analysis of your current floor plan and printer placement to identify inefficient processes and unnecessary expenses. From this analysis, suggestions will be made for rightsizing your print environment.
- Design project plan (Statement of Work)
- Assess current state via print monitoring software (design, usage and spending)
- Identification of inefficient processes, overtaxed support staff and unnecessary expense
- Design future state recommendation
- Establish proposed costs and associated savings
- Right-size environment/redirect print
- Consolidate vendors
Back to Top
Step 2: Manage the Print Environment
After plans for optimization are established, the solution is implemented. If necessary, new equipment is procured, installed and securely networked. Next, training will occur to ensure a smooth transition. Then, ongoing maintenance, supply ordering and tracking begins.
- Implementation
- Training
- Device management ongoing management (measure results)
- Ongoing supply tracking (e.g., real-time toner levels) and predictive supply ordering
- Day-to-day maintenance, support and repairs statistics & reporting
- 24-hour online customer service portal
- Cost-per-page summaries and tracking
- Regular supply utilization reports
- Ongoing equipment efficiency analyses
- Identify any necessary changes
- Recommendations for adjustments as needed to continuously improve
Back to Top
Step 3: Improve Print Workflow
Document management evolves with your business. Once print management and the tracking of results is in place, it is time to explore further improvements to workflows with the aim of creating sustainable results.
This is how MPS is no longer just about achieving significant cost reduction targets; MPS is an enabler for digital transformation. It is about moving to an optimized future state that drives business process efficiency.
MPS can lead to improved workflow via:
- Document capture and indexing
- Document storage and archival
- Document distribution softwares
- Forms automation
- Fax server
- Mobile printing
- Controlled printing of confidential data
Back to Top
Partner with an Expert
Focus on core competencies and mission-critical tasks with improved printer management that secures printers, cuts printing costs, focuses IT resources where they will have the most impact and reduces wastefulness.
Ready to create a print infrastructure that offers reliable service and support and a big-picture strategic sense of how to achieve your business goals by turning your technological infrastructure into the asset it was meant to be? A Loffler print management expert can visit your organization for a no-obligation assessment of your print and copier environment. In return, you will receive a complimentary report on how a customized MPS plan can start saving you time and money.
