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Cover Story
Ask six people in a room to
define managed print services
and you will get half a dozen
different answers. But ask
them what the benefits
are and there will be broad
consensus, the only points
of differentiation being the
scale of the problem and the
potential savings.
“According to some
estimates, print could amount
to as much as 11% of operating
revenue when you take into
account hardware, servicing and
operating costs,” explains Rob
Brown, Oki Systems business
manager for MPS. “This sounds
a bit high to me, but even if the
real figure is half this, there
is clearly a strong case for
businesses to address print
expenditure.”
For those that do, there is
enormous scope for savings
because most organisations
have many more print devices
than they actually need.
“In most offices you will
see a fax machine, next to a
mono printer, next to a colour
printer, next to a scanner simply
because that is the order in
which these devices have been
acquired by a business. You can
consolidate these down to one
multifunctional machine and get
space and energy savings as a
result,” Brown explains.
Of course, it’s not quite
as simple as that: MPS
usually does involve device
consolidation but a purely
device-centric approach is
unlikely to be successful and
it is still possible to achieve
impressive savings even if there
is only a very small reduction in
the number of devices deployed
(see case study on page 17).
“The key thing is to ensure
that print devices support
business operations,” says
Brown. “When we conduct
a print audit we look at a
business’s printing needs: Do
they use advanced finishing?
The key to MPS success
OKI has differentiated its MPS offering to reflect the diverse
needs of end users, as Rob Brown explains to
PrintIT
Do they need a large MFP
with stapling and finishing? A
majority of the copiers installed
are large A3 machines, but
A3 might not be used, so you
have to understand what the
customer needs are.”
Nor, Brown emphasises, is
MPS just about cost reduction:
often the main driver is the
need to improve productivity
or implement more efficient
workflows.
“Consider the case of a
leading furniture supplier that
offers customers 0% financing
for its furniture sales. It asks
customers to fill out paper
application forms that it sends
through the post to finance
companies to process and make
decisions about. The company
is busiest on Saturdays when
customers typically buy
consumer goods. However,
these people are not just buying
furniture but also TVs, HiFi
systems, washing machines and
so on from other High Street
retailers. Because many of
these provide instant decisions
on finance applications, the
furniture company was finding
that by the time its finance
documents reached the finance
partner, many of its customers
had already hit their credit limits
leading to the loss of sales.”
“It sounds ridiculous,” says
Brown, “but something as
simple as being able to scan
and email those applications
would have overcome that
particular problem.”
Other important
considerations are carbon
reductions (see Defra case
study opposite) and security and
compliance. Often, such issues
are the main motivation, but
in addressing them OKI is able
to deliver additional benefits,
such as cost savings and
reduced paper use and power
consumption.
A good example, says
Brown, is data security. “We
recommend secure PIN release
to protect a customer’s data.
But there is a secondary
benefit, which is that you don’t
end up with waste paper from
uncollected prints. We estimate
that secure release produces
paper savings of 20-30%
compared to savings of 10-20%
for default duplex.
“The other thing we would
advocate is default mono
printing. If you have default
mono and enforce print policies
relating to applications, for
example defaulting to B&W
when printing from a web
browser, you are controlling
costs in a better way.”
What’s best for you?
These examples illustrate
the importance of the MPS
assessment phase when OKI
and its channel partners analyse
customers’ existing and future
needs to determine not only
how a customer’s printer estate
could be made more efficient
but, more fundamentally, exactly
what type of managed print
service the customer wants.
For, as Brown points out,
when it comes to MPS one size
doesn’t fit all.
“A lot of people get caught
up in the idea of MPS but in our
experience all that 50-70% of
customers need is a managed
page service or basic print
service where a machine is
provided with a fixed cost per
page, servicing and an on-site
engineer if anything goes wrong.
That makes up a large part of
the business.”
He adds that problems occur
when MPS providers attempt
to shoehorn a customer’s
requirements into their
conception of managed print
services either to maximise
profits or to suit the vendor’s
product range and areas of
expertise.
This, he suggests, is not a
problem for OKI, which offers a