By Holger Groenert, product marketing manager at Itec
For most organisations, opting for a managed print services model can be an attractive way to drive down operational costs while improving the performance of their document output environments.
Managed print services can be defined as an end-user organisation outsourcing the end-to-end management of its printing infrastructure - including the entire fleet of output devices - to a specialist service provider. According to this definition, the vendor should be able to manage all devices in the fleet, including those from rival suppliers, in a unified manner.
The chosen supplier will take full responsibility for the entire print infrastructure, including all devices, services, support, and supplies. This is an approach that makes your printing costs transparent and easy to understand since you no longer need to manage multiple service contracts and suppliers.
You will have a predictable cost per page for printing, and will be equipped to keep optimising your document environment. We believe that the process of optimising your print environment with managed print services can be broken down into three steps.
Analyse your environment
You can't manage what you don't understand. For that reason, the journey towards managed print services begins by working with a service provider to understand how much your print infrastructure is costing you every month. How many devices do you have and where are they located? Who is using them and for what purposes? What does it cost you, on average, to print a page? With this information in hand, you can identify the opportunities to reduce costs and improve efficiencies in your document output environment.
Control and consolidate your fleet
Armed with an in-depth analysis of your print environment, you can begin the process of optimisation in earnest. You could, for example, cut down on the number of printers, scanners and fax machines by consolidating your infrastructure around fewer centralised multifunctional products (MFPs). Your vendor could also help you to put software in place that will help you to track, control, and accurately bill for printer use.
In addition, a good service provider will be able to remotely monitor your print infrastructure and dispatch a technician for repairs as soon as it receives an automated alert about a fault or outage in one of your devices. By cutting down on downtime, you can boost your productivity and profits substantially.
Streamline your business processes
The third step is to look at ways that you can optimise your business processes and streamline your workflows. You might benefit from software solutions that allow you to route print jobs to the best suited device, or which allow you to manage settings for documents centrally so that you don't need to redefine settings for documents when they change printers.
Another workflow solution you may find invaluable is a document management system that integrates with printers and MFPs to streamline workflow and bring order to the many documents companies need to store and retrieve. The important thing is to keep looking for opportunities to do things faster and cheaper than before.
Closing words
The success of adopting a managed print service depends a great deal on the service provider you choose to work with. You need to find a partner that has a proven track record with complex outsourcing relationships and who can offer the software tools that can help you understand and manage your print environment. It goes without saying that your partner needs a national infrastructure and experience in managing complex multi-vendor office automation environments.