Making the Case for Managed Print Services

Most companies cannot identify how much a single printed page costs them. About 90 percent of all companies don’t track their print costs, even though printing is often the third-highest expense for companies after rent and payroll. Effective print management is critical to maintaining business operations that emphasize efficiency and productivity across an organization.

One out-of-order device can create workflow bottlenecks that slow down entire departments and lead to considerable company downtime. With Managed Print Services (MPS), an “out-of-order” device can be serviced before it wreaks havoc on workflows. If your organization operates a wide range of print solutions, managing and maintaining those devices can be a nagging source of frustration. Effective management is crucial to minimizing downtime and supporting smooth day-to-day business operations.

A functional print fleet is only one of the benefits of Managed Print Services. When you partner with the right Managed Print Services provider, you’re able to do the following:

• Increase the efficiency of your print operations.
• Enhance the security of your print environment, and ensure compliance throughout your organization.
• Reduce device downtime and service request volume.
• Create a seamless, efficient stream of print supplies, and improve your control over print costs and usage.
• Introduce and build enhanced document workflows.

In this guide, we’ll cover the key advantages of enlisting the help of a Managed Print Services provider—and in the process, provide a roadmap to leaner, more efficient operations for your company.

Hidden printing costs can massively impact an organization’s bottom line. At best, print waste and other inefficiencies take a bite out of your company’s profit margins. At worst, mismanaged print infrastructure can threaten an entire company’s fiscal solvency.

The average U.S. office worker prints roughly 10,000 sheets of paper every year, resulting in hundreds of dollars of annual print waste per employee. The cost of printing and print-related functions within an organization includes both hard material costs and soft costs that likely aren’t measured in your print expense calculations.

Those hard costs include the following:

• Equipment acquisition
• Supplies (ink, toner, paper, etc.)
• Service visits for maintenance and repair
• Device energy consumption

Hard costs aren’t the only expense that businesses need to account for in their print budget. Other hard-to-quantify costs, known as “soft costs,” can cost you money by cutting into your company’s efficiency and productivity. Examples include:

• Hardware life
• IT employee burden rate
• User burden rate
• Management burden rate
• Lost productivity

A single print device breakdown, for example, doesn’t just carry the expense of a service repair visit. It can also require the involvement of IT, as well as management dedicating time to coordinate the repair visit. Meanwhile, all print jobs and other tasks depending on that device are forced to either seek out an alternative solution or to hit pause on the process altogether, creating bottlenecks and stalling operations.

Achieving Financial Stability Through Managed Print Services

Managed print services give you greater visibility and control over print-related  costs. Hidden costs can be identified and added up to help calculate the true cost of printing for your organization. Data-driven print analytics will give you the tools you need to track your printing cost per page. Once those costs are identified, a software solution can be implemented to manage your print environment with greater efficiency while reducing print-related expenses

In the case of a device malfunction, for example, an MPS provider can proactively coordinate the repair, and it can do so with less involvement of IT professionals. The response is faster, resulting in less downtime, and the process of addressing the breakdown involves fewer steps and company personnel, resulting in less resource waste.

Outsourcing the management of your print environment also reduces the burden of device troubleshooting placed on employees and managers. At the same time, MPS optimizes your devices and other print resources, tracking usage to minimize costs for supplies and hardware, and even coordinating proactive device management to reduce the rate of breakdowns.

Through print services auditing, your MPS can also optimize your use of current and future print assets, delivering a net financial savings over the course of your service contract.

Managing an organization’s print solutions is a burden that often falls on IT departments. On average, print-related help desk tickets account for 23 percent of all IT help desk tickets. These tickets are delivered to IT among a wide range of other help tickets related to security, mobile devices, and whatever software your company uses in its normal course of business. 

Although IT professionals are often capable of addressing print service issues that your company may face, their lack of expertise in print solutions can lead to slower issue resolution, which compounds the costs of associated downtime and also slows down assistance for other tech-related issues. A Managed Print Service provider helps focus the efforts of your IT team, which in turn lets them concentrate their resources and attention on other mission-critical functions for your business.

Managed Print Services also provide excellent support for two key components of your print environment: security and compliance.

Security

Like any other endpoint device, print solutions can create a security vulnerability when not properly managed. Without the right management practices and security procedures in place, your organization could be exposed to damaging security breaches that steal sensitive data, which in turn becomes a serious liability that may jeopardize the future of the company.

Each company’s print environment features a unique device footprint that requires a customized security plan. Some printers, for example, are in open office spaces or even spaces accessible to the public, which require different security measures than print hardware securely locked in a private office. 

Cloud-based printing services come with additional security considerations. Your business may have different levels of data encryption in place to secure both print devices and the data that drives print production. In addition, print software requires regular security updates, and device authorization and user passcodes may need to be managed to ensure that print devices and print data are carefully provisioned. 

Managed Print Service providers can implement multiple security mechanisms to mitigate any risks your organization might face. Regularly updating and patching print software, print device authorization with secure sign-in, and the secure disposal of sensitive documents are just some of the ways MPS can turn your print environment into a strong component of your enterprise security architecture.

Compliance

Different industries face different expectations and challenges when it comes to meeting regulatory compliance. Healthcare organizations must manage private patient data according to HIPAA standards. Financial firms must adhere to the Right to Financial Privacy Act, the National Bank Act, and other government regulations. Companies collecting online user data must manage that data through printing practices that are compliant with GDPR, CCPA, and other governing data regulations.

Print services can have a huge role in ensuring compliance. With an MPS provider, you can create a tailored print management strategy that meets your industry-specific needs and keeps your business in good standing. 

Through a combination of compliant security measures and adherence to established data management standards, an MPS provider can stay on top of new regulatory legislation and ensure that your print infrastructure is keeping up with those evolving expectations. Given the high cost of non-compliance, comprehensive and consistent security can help your organization steer clear of hefty fines and long-lasting damage to your brand’s reputation.