When was the last time you changed your Managed Print Service provider?

It might be an unfair question, you might be getting the best possible service for your company with innovative solutions and your print costs might be dropping year on year as digital transformation and document management processes start to stick.

Or, you might be settling for the same managed print service (MPS) that keeps your fleet of devices ticking along for a good enough price. The question then begins to change...

Is it loyalty or laziness?

Let’s be honest, we’ve all been in this situation. Whether it’s our energy provider, car insurance, broadband, phone provider or even the shop you go to every week - we all have what the industry likes to think of as ‘brand loyalty’.

Brand loyalty, is in theory built around trust, and it’s only when something goes wrong that you might consider changing provider. The unfortunate side of brand loyalty is that often, the service doesn’t change but the price does.

In fact, in the consumer world, it’s said that ‘loyal customers pay up to £987 more a year for everyday services’. As mentioned above, we all have experience of this. When your car insurer gives you a renewal quote that’s £30 more than last year, do you actively search for another quote or do you just pay the renewal?

Managed Print Services should evolve

While most of the examples above are consumer services, the situation also applies to the business world, and in this case managed print services.

What you need to realise is that MPS is a service that should adapt and evolve with your company and should offer solutions to cover all eventualities. As the business grows, MPS should grow with you and as the strategy changes, so should your managed print service.

Print is not static and managed print services covers so much more than simply managing your fleet of hardware devices, yet many people procuring managed print services don’t see the benefits they could be getting.

Whether that be reduced printing costs, increased productivity, higher levels of document and data security, digitalisation of document and print processes, better document management, more visibility of users printing, scanning and copying… the list goes on.

If you can honestly say that you’re current provider gives you all of these things for a price that ensures a return on investment over the time of the contract, that’s great!

But if you’re getting the same service 3-4 years into a 5 year contract with no change and no real innovation, maybe you need to rethink.

Stop being lazy loyal

You know as well as we do that MPS isn’t purely about cost, so please don’t think that’s the message we’re trying to sell.

It’s possible that through changing provider that the cost will increase, but it’s about what you get for your money and whether it aligns with business goals (yes, print can do that) and gives you a return on investment.

Next time your MPS contract is up for renewal (and maybe your car insurance or broadband too), try shopping around to see what else is out there, even if it just makes you grateful for the current service you’re paying for.