In a world of digital transactions and cloud-based services, you might be surprised by the number of ways managed print services (MPS) could improve your business (even if you already have it!).
The main reason organisations explore MPS is to reduce the costs associated with documentation and printing, but MPS can deliver tangible value in a whole host of other areas.
Finding those opportunities is only possible if your business undergoes an MPS assessment. This is the first step in learning how MPS can transform your document environment and use of printing infrastructure.
Below, we’ve picked out twenty reasons your business needs an MPS assessment, and split them between the main drivers.
It’s all about cost
- Controlling the cost of printing infrastructure
An MPS assessment will help you control the costs associated with your printing infrastructure. Eg: Are your devices set up to save energy? Do you source toner efficiently?
- Predicting future spend
Businesses should be able to accurately predict future spend on printing and document management. Eg: Can your infrastructure today support your plans tomorrow? How digital is your industry likely to be, and how will that affect your costs?
- Balancing capital spend and operating expenses
Investments in new printing gear and the on-going cost of document management needs to be balanced in order to protect budgets. Eg: Should you Lease? Buy? Outsource? Can your investment in MPS reduce your operating expenses?
- Identifying hidden costs
How much is your printing infrastructure really costing the company? Are you in line with an optimised device-to-employee ratio for your industry? Can you implement quick wins like dual sided and mono printing?
When Xenith carry out MPS assessments, we uncover an average 42% cost saving and at least a 20% cost saving regardless of how optimised the company is.
- Ability to increase margins
MPS will help your business improve revenue and increase margins through greater efficiency. Eg: Increasing productivity by automating workflows while reducing cost by eliminating paper wastage.
Governance
- Increase understanding of existing print infrastructure
How well do you know every nook and cranny of your existing print infrastructure? An MPS assessment will unearth what’s really going on. Eg: Good data will help inform your next steps and position you as a strategic leader.
- Explore and measure the effectiveness of the print environment
Busy working environments prevent businesses from properly assessing the value their print environment delivers. You and your team have worked hard to optimise your infrastructure - we can help you to quantify the real business benefits, so you can spread the good word.
- Meet sustainability goals
Printing and document management plays a big part in the sustainability of a business, whose goals can only be achieved if both elements are running as efficiently as possible. Eg: You can get an ISO 14001 accreditation by eliminating wasteful printing and transitioning to digital.
- Ability to manage large populations of disparate devices
If you run a large, unconnected printing environment, an MPS assessment will identify ways to manage it more effectively. Eg: It's so much easier for your in-house IT team to manage an environment with a common print driver and a single print queue across the organisation’s devices.
- Ensure a neat switch of MPS contracts
Your business may already have an MPS contract in place, but an assessment will ensure contract switches take place smoothly.
An assessment gives your new supplier a chance to prove themselves to you before you sign a contract with them. It also helps them learn more about you to better meet your objectives.
Location-based challenges
- Meeting the demands of mergers and acquisitions
If your business is acquired or merged with another organisation, an MPS assessment will enable you to plan the integration of separate printing systems. Eg: Which systems or processes to integrate, which to consolidate and which to eliminate and which to digitise.
- New mergers seeking greater efficiency
As well as learning which systems and processes need to be integrated, an MPS assessment can ensure newly-merged businesses achieve greater efficiency and identify savings that can be made from their printing infrastructure.
- Printing management across a business estate
Businesses that feature multiple locations will find ways to better manage distributed printing if they undertake an MPS assessment. Eg: How can users travelling between offices print anywhere without IT intervention?
- Addressing autonomous buying decisions
If autonomous departments exist within your organisation, they’re probably making their own printing-related buying decisions - which may not be in the best interests of the business.
Shifting all offices and companies in the group to a single supplier could save millions, and also reduce administrative hassle by providing a single itemised invoice for the whole organisation’s hardware, software and consumables.
- Meet the needs of a growing workforce
If your business is growing and expanding its workforce to cope with increased demand, its printing requirements will change considerably, too. Your strategic decisions with respect to MPS today, will affect your workforce tomorrow, like whether your Content Management System is modular, and the increasing shift to digital working.
Strategy, productivity and market considerations
- Drive efficiency in paper-intensive processes
Your business may rely heavily on paper for certain processes, and an MPS assessment can identify opportunities to drive greater efficiency in such areas. Eg: Do those invoices need to be printed in order to be signed off? Can that be done digitally?
- Meet new customer needs
As your customer base develops, there’s a strong chance it’ll create the need for new documentation or printing workflows, and you’ll need to identify them before it’s too late.
- Increase understanding of document usage
How well do you understand the way in which printed documents are used? An MPS assessment will provide a unique insight into what happens after people press ‘print’. Eg: What is the document lifecycle - is it stored, copied, binned, replicated, posted or annotated?
- Ability to align the print infrastructure with business goals
Every element of your organisation’s print infrastructure should be aligned with the business’ goals. MPS assessments will identify elements that aren’t delivering a meaningful ROI.
- Help meet security and compliance requirements
The printing operation of a business plays a significant role in meeting industry compliance requirements and security standards - how does yours fare in each area? Eg: Is your customer and prospect data protected from a printing and document management perspective to comply with GDPR?
There’s often more going on within your print infrastructure than you think, even when you have managed print services in place. An MPS assessment will uncover hidden inefficiencies in your business and help the organisation achieve its goals.
On average, Xenith’s MPS Assessment uncovers a 42% cost saving, regardless of how optimised a company is - book your free benchmarking assessment.