Member Article

What is ‘Managed Print Service’ and how can it benefit your organisation?

Sam Elphick is the Sales Manager at Lex Business Equipment, the north-west’s longest established supplier of office equipment. He explains the core advantages of moving to a fully managed print service, along with the financial savings that can be made.

Managed Print Service or MPS as it is commonly abbreviated is a term that is often thrown around by IT professionals, yet seldomly defined. In brief, MPS is a solution offered to organisations whom wish to gain total control and visibility over their internal printing processes, made possible with aid of a print-audit from Lex Business Equipment.

In today’s business climate reducing costs is a key priority for almost all organisations, unfortunately printers, MFPs and copiers seem to fall under the cost-cutting radar with business principles failing to understand the abundance of savings that can be made purely by switching to a fully managed print service. Print can amount to almost 10 percent of a businesses annual spending, yet by instructing Lex to perform an audit firms can save up to 30 percent per annum, or £144 per employee per annum. Law firms, for example, may show savings of around 41 percent with the right managed service, according to research firm InfoTrends, while financial firms and healthcare organisations can expect an average saving of 33 percent and 27 percent, respectively.

Common printer headaches:

• Devices breaking down, with no technical support available
• Office managers dealing with printer related issues
• High costs for toner, consumables and cartridges
• Running out of toner unexpectedly
• Mix of manufacturer devices on the network, and multiple invoices from several suppliers.

How is MPS implemented? Firstly, our MPS expert will work alongside your organisations IT manager, and finance principle to understand daily methods of printing - along with any current expenditure on printer toner, consumables, repairs and technical support. A print-audit will then be initiated - at this stage our company will remotely monitor your print volumes, colour usage per device; this usually takes around 4-6 weeks and is completed remotely. Next we present our findings, and more importantly the improvements that can be made in your business printing processes - as well as confirmation of annual cost savings, a new fleet of printing equipment is installed and the benefits of a managed service begin. In most cases the savings can in fact cover the cost of new equipment.

Benefits of a Managed Print Service

1. Increased Productivity - With someone else managing your printing processes, staff will no longer have the responsibility of clearing jams, printer errors or managing toner levels - freeing up employee resources.
2. £0 Toner Spend - A managed print solution includes all printer toner, therefore organisations will no longer have boxes of costly printer toner sat in stock cupboards.
3. No Downtime - There is no need to wait days for an engineer to attend your site and charge you an hourly rate to repair a broken printer. All repairs, parts and on-going maintenance of printers is covered, and with annual preventative maintenance visits equipment will be kept in excellent condition.
4. Energy Improvements - By consolidating your printing equipment, organisations will notice reductions in electricity expenditure, as well as environmental advantages.
5. Budgeting - Based on historical volumes and usage, organisations will have a clear prediction of what their monthly/quarterly bills will be, enabling budget forcasting.
6. Refresh of Equipment - Whether your MPS agreement lasts for 3 or 5 years, all equipment will be replaced with new technology when the agreement is renewed.

Lex Business Equipment offer the full spectrum of managed print services for everyone from small businesses up to large, multinational corporations and the education sector. Lex have a consistent record of improving business printing processes and are proud to have saved organisations across the UK hundreds of thousands of pounds.

To learn more visit www.lexbusiness.co.uk or speak to an MPS expert on 0161 724 5711.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by SAEpr .