Before You Invest in Printing

Printing requirements of organizations can vary depending on the size and

nature of the business. Optimizing printing infrastructure for enterprises

spread over different physical locations is always important to reduce costs. In

earlier days, printers used to remain as the unmanaged piece of equipment, but

now companies are putting lots of efforts to cut down costs associated with

printing. Popularity of managed printing services (MPS) is a good example to

highlight how organizations can benefit from domain experts. Using MPS,

organizations can save up to 30-40% cost on printing related activities and can

focus on their core business. But if your organization already has a big fleet

of printers and that too from different vendors, then opting for MPS would make

no sense. Because, here services are vendor specific. So, if you opt for Canon

MPS then your HP or Xerox printers would not be supported. In this scenario,

getting right equipment is very critical. For example, if your printing

requirement is of thousand-pages, you should get the printer that can support

the same. You can't overload your device with prints that it can't support.

There are various software available that can analyze printer usage in an

organization. This analysis can be used to put correct printer at correct place

thus optimizing printer usage.

Managed Print Services



After opting for MPS from a reliable vendor, you can opt for printing

service in different modes. For example, for new branch office requirements,

instead of buying a new printer you can ask your MPS vendor to provide printers

inside your premises. This not only saves initial investment on printers but

also enables branches to be functional instantly. Organizations can also opt to

print inside vendor premises, if information to be printed is not critical. One

more option is to get a new printing unit installed inside your premises for a

fixed amount of time when printing requirement is very high. However, you can

also go for pay-per-print model, where a fixed amount is charged per print.

Services that are provided by an MPS provider include: maintenance of printing

units across all locations that include managing and providing printing paper

and cartridges, replacement or repair of damaged unit, providing a consolidated

bill that gives visibility to top management about actual spending on printing.

Besides taking care of printing needs, MPS providers also include number of

different services. They provide consolidated reports like a dedicated web page

that keeps track of printing activities, few MPS vendors (like Canon ) also give

facility of remote monitoring of printer units using advanced software. This

gives the MPS provider visibility, and thus they can easily track and resolve

faults. Complete life cycle asset management service is also provided, which

includes providing support to any acquisition, movement and changes to devices,

as well as the disposal of unused devices provided by different vendors.

Through such managed services, device capacity can be scaled to meet

increasing requirements. By measuring your usage of a device, an MPS provider

can either simply maintain or replace it with a larger or smaller device to

match your organizations demand. This enables customization of the services to

meet your unique business needs.

With a choice of multiple financing options, there is no need to lock up

capital in the infrastructure. An MPS can provide you comprehensive mobile print

strategy, utilizing full range of mobile printing solutions to your

organization. Instead of having disconnected set of mobile print solutions, an

MPS will work with you to define an integrated mobile print infrastructure to

meet your specific business needs. Employees gain seamless access to network

printers, wired or wireless.

To streamline communication with a client, MPS providers assign dedicated

client service managers that act as a single point of contact. Client manager is

responsible to keep track of device fleet and take preventive measures to ensure

hassle free services to a client. Regular audits are carried out by him to keep

track on changing demands of client and to provide appropriate support.

Sandeep Koul with inputs from Vishnu Anand