With U.S office workers using 10,000 sheets of paper per year on average, it’s clear hard copy documents remain an integral part of modern business.

Whether the print run in your organisation is relatively small or consists of several thousands of pages per day, managed print services (MPS) will offer three clear benefits to your operation.

Here’s how MPS delivers tangible productivity, usage and support benefits to organisations of all sizes.

1. Increased productivity

Let’s go back to that 10,000 sheets of paper figure.

Chances are, most of those printed documents don’t need to be printed at all; employees often fall back on print when trying to find information that would have been more easily located if it had been digitised.

MPS contracts enable businesses to combine a paper-free document strategy with workflows that help reduce print costs for documents that are required in physical form.

This provides exponential boosts in efficiency by:

• helping staff locate specific information more easily;
• improving the ability to share documents (particularly with remote workers); and
• eradicating time spent re-keying information collected on printed documents.

A great MPS provider will help you reduce your reliance on print while simultaneously managing your essential print operations.

2. A clear picture of printer usage

One of the most profound benefits offered by MPS is the ability to gain a clear, bird’s eye view of your print usage.

Without the ability to see exactly what your output devices are costing you, you’ll never be able to define a meaningful ROI figure.

MPS enable businesses to accurately calculate two vital usage figures:

• AMCV: the Average Monthly Colour Volume is the average cost of colour printing in terms of paper and ink.
• AMMV: the Average Monthly Mono-colour Volume takes into account the fact that while black and white prints tend to be cheaper per sheet (up to 50% less than colour printing), the cost of blank ink cartridges is still significant.

3. Vital support

One of the most recognised and tangible benefits of MPS is the support and maintenance offered by the provider.

Despite printing devices becoming more user-friendly, the sheer scale of some environments makes it difficult for in-house teams to offer support beyond commonplace printer-related issues (for example, paper jams and cartridge replacements).

With an MPS contract in place, there will be significantly fewer issues for the in-house team to deal with, thanks to the design of a highly-optimised environment that’s easier to administer.

Equally, proactive service delivery from the MPS provider will result in pre-emptive maintenance being carried out and far less calls to the internal IT Helpdesk.

There’s currently no such thing as a paperless office, nor is an environment of that kind likely to become commonplace any time soon.

With that in mind, every organisation should consider the benefits of MPS and the positive impact it has on one of the most important yet often misused functions of business.