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To procure the best Managed Print Service for your business, you first need to find out what MPS means to the provider.
Managed print can vary in the types of services offered and this means that different providers might have slightly different definitions of what managed print is, for example, is it just about printers and consumables, or do they go as far as ensuring security and optimisation of paper-heavy processes within your company?
Depending on how a provider defines managed print, the provision of service might need to be brought into question as well, to ensure you get the service you actually need.
What’s the scale of provision?
Before asking this question, it’s good to consider what your goals are from MPS, be it cost reduction, time savings, environmental sustainability, or possibly something completely different.
Having the goal in mind will give a steer on what you’re looking for from a Managed Print Service.
With the goal in mind, you can ask the provider about the provision of services: ‘What’s the scale of provision?’ or to reword it ‘What are you capable of delivering?’
By asking one of these questions, you can start to get an idea as to whether the provider can be a ‘one stop shop’ for all your print and document related needs including hardware, software and services including assessment.
Bespoke and flexible or rigid and set?
Something you need to decide when procuring MPS is how flexible you want the service to be. Based on the scale of provision, you can see whether a provider will just cover some of what you need and whether there is scope to try new things in the future. Effectively, you can select a ‘future-proofed provider’ - one that can not only meet your requirements today, but can also do so in the future.
In some cases, this might be already specified by the MPS provider, depending on how rigid their service offering is. In situations where the service is more bespoke, asking the scale of provision can be a great way to find out if the service is flexible enough to fit what your organisation needs.
Agreeing a service that fits your business
Depending what goals you’ve set for MPS, it might be as clear cut as asking the provider to ‘confirm that you can deliver a Managed Print Service for Print, Copy, Scan, fax and follow-me functionality, including device supply, install, removal, break-fix, consumables and parts replacement, software support.’
Other questions you might ask include:
- Please outline the spectrum of different hardware products that you are able to supply and manage (eg: production devices, wide-format devices, A3, A4, multifunctional, fax machines, scanners, etc).
- Please outline the spectrum of different software products that you are able to supply and manage (print management software, business intelligence tools, advanced scanning automation, workflow automation, document management systems, etc).
What is the breadth and depth of assessment?
As well as questioning the scale of provision of a Managed Print Service, you may also want to question the first stage of the MPS offering: the assessment.
The assessment is all about checking your current print processes, culture and environment.
From this assessment, it is usually possible to calculate the ideal employee to device ratio, volumes, Total Cost of Ownership and environmental impact. This is the bare minimum in order to effectively design and manage your hardware provision.
It’s a good idea to question the depth of the assessment as a more in-depth assessment might go further than the bare minimum to use advanced analytics to get a real insight of your printing processes.
This involves identifying and assessing your paper heavy processes and quantifying the level of efficiency that might be possible by optimising or digitising the process. This could also include a records management assessment, information governance assessment and a mail & distribution services assessment.
The questions to ask about the assessment include:
- What would we expect to understand better as a result of your assessment?
- Do you conduct a user needs analysis to uncover the functionality required by users? If so, how?
- How does each deliverable help to design a solution that meets our objectives?
- How do you conduct an assessment?
- How do you identify ‘bad paper’ or unnecessary printing?
- How do you quantify the results of making the process efficient?
By asking these questions in your RFP or as part of your procurement process, you can get a better idea for what a provider can offer you and whether it fits with your overall MPS objective and goals.
