You might have heard about Managed Document Services, but you’re not sure whether or not it is a service your business would benefit from. After all, its printers and copiers we’re talking about. How difficult can it be? However, the question should not be how hard understanding print equipment is; instead ask yourself the following questions and uncover the benefit a Managed Document Services program could provide your business.
If you have 3 printers in your local small-town office or if you have hundreds in 10 offices scattered across the country, Managed Document Services are right for your business. The benefits of print and document management can apply to any business, regardless of size and print equipment quantity.
Most organisations do not take the time to define a print strategy. It is time-consuming and falls at the bottom of the priority list. A lack of process can cost a significant amount of money, in the long run. The costs correlated with printing can add up to between 1-10% of a businesses’ total revenue. Installing a print strategy that effectively monitors and manages your fleet of equipment can provide your company cost savings of up to 30%.
Most businesses do not have an exact understanding of their print costs. Commonly we find businesses only take into account the cost of equipment, service and supplies.
However, these hard costs are only a portion of what makes up your total printing investment.
When determining this number, you also have to consider numerous indirect costs that can significantly impact your total investment. You must take into account every component: equipment, supplies, maintenance, employee burden rates and equipment life. These add up much higher than anticipated, which is an unpleasant surprise for many businesses.
As we’ve already suggested, implementing a print process could save your business up to 30%. Additionally, an initial print technology assessment will uncover unknown print costs and missed savings opportunities. Many MDS programs save companies money because they allow employees to focus on their priorities and leave these print technology duties to professionals who perform these tasks on a daily basis.
These cost-saving benefits are achieved by:
These questions are positioned to get you thinking about your current print environment and how it is being managed. Every company has a unique situation, but we believe Managed Document Services will provide value to most businesses. Request a free print audit to get a more solidified answer to the question, “How do I know if Managed Document Services is right for my business?” Your assessment results will give you your answer.
As we visit prospective education sector clients, we regularly come across various iterations of ‘old school’ print contracts. The reference to old school is a pun; what we refer to are the old fashioned, expensive, punitive print contracts that were common place in the 90’s and early 2000’s.
If there is one sector that ‘got hit’ hardest by these sales techniques it is the education sector. It is not unusual to find schools saddled with ongoing finance on devices, alongside stinging (minimum volume) pence-per-page consumable and service contracts. To put this into perspective, these contracts could be based on estimates of 50,000+ prints per quarter, a figure you have to pay whether you hit that volume or not and can include the capital cost of the equipment, if not then there is usually a separate rental contract running alongside.
The reason that schools are paying such high charges is because they may have been mis-sold into the centralised Managed Print Service (MPS) proposition for supposed cost reduction purposes. The concept of centralised print, at that point in time, was not necessarily incorrect – as smaller desktop devices were expensive to run - however this is definitely not the case today. The issue is that many of these contracts, whilst designed to save the client money, actually only helped suppliers hide copious amounts of margin in the hardware and print charges. Furthermore, no one seems to have gone back to the schools and told them that things have changed and that the only people benefiting from the old approach were the device providers and support companies.
Not only has technology changed, but the demands in school have also changed significantly since then. Most schools now use smart boards, computers and iPads in classes which reduces the amount of paper required for lesson planning and delivery alone. Newsletters and parental communications also rely more on email than paper resulting in a further reduction in demand.
Technology costs now mean that it is much more time and cost efficient to have a device per classroom, even more so than centralisation ever offered. Recent examples that we have delivered for our clients provide an all-inclusive price (hardware, consumables and support) for significantly less than their current service and consumable spend – and with no hidden extras! On top of the cost benefits of ‘in class’ printing, the idea of decentralising also has many practical benefits. Nurseries and Key Stage 1 classes tend to use photos and pictures to show child development and so access to immediate printing allows teachers to keep records up to date.
The explosion in wireless and mobile devices also means pupils and teachers alike need ready access to printers as more and more content is produced not in books, but on tablets, phones and laptops – in short the idea of leaving the classroom and walking to a centralised print area like the staff room or office is no longer a practical expectation.
With mounting pressure on schools to balance the books whilst achieving outstanding outcomes, the cost of print is once again becoming a major issue. And it’s time that things changed to ensure that schools can use their squeezed budgets to be cost effective, efficient and modern when it comes to print.