5 Reasons Why Your Managed Print Service May Be Letting Your Business Down
While a Managed Print Service (MPS) agreement is generally the most productive and cost-effective way of acquiring and servicing the printers that your business needs, some traditional providers may not be delivering exactly what your business needs. It is important to properly assess your business' photocopying & printing needs and be aware of some common pitfalls in the managed print services space.
Despite our world becoming more digitised, printing remains a necessity in many offices. It is an overhead that many business owners and managers may cast off as a necessary expense, without understanding exactly how it's affecting their bottom line. It's not uncommon to be overpaying for a service you think is a core business expense but which, in reality, is rarely optimised or cost-effective.
1. You're locked into high print volumes
Many MPS vendors offer agreements with minimum contracted print volumes. This is usually calculated based on their recommended monthly print volume, which is the amount of printing needed to maintain optimal device performance. If you're working with a flexible vendor that is tailoring your printing to your needs, these minimum volumes are nothing to worry about, as unutilised prints can rolls into the following month, and if you're consistently going under or over your volumes, the vendor will work with you to adjust your volumes to closer match your current needs.
However, a problem arises when customers are oversold on a device that has a high print volume which is surplus to their needs, and their vendor does not offer the flexibility to adjust their volumes as needs evolve.
Being locked into a contract with a pre-determined, high print volume can mean you're paying more for your print services than your actual usage requires. Moving away from a traditional MPS provider can ensure you only pay for what you use.
2. Unnecessary A3 printers
Major printer vendors want to sell you big A3 printers; the 'Rolls-Royces' of the printing world. As a result, you will probably find these A3 printers in most sizeable offices world-wide. But, do you actually need an A3 multifunction?
There are only two major reasons to pick an A3 over an A4 printer; you're doing a very high volume of printing, or you're actually printing on A3 paper, either as booklets or larger format prints.
If you're printing in high volumes, you'll want an A3 to take advantage of higher yield consumables (toner and ink), so that you're not having to replace these as frequently.
As for A3 and booklet printing when was the last time that you or your team really need to print something A3-sized? It's important to assess how your staff are printing and determine if you really need A3 or if you're find doing your everyday printing on an A4 machine.
As "bigger is better", large A3 machines are more expensive than A4 printers, which means more revenue for MPS vendors. If you genuinely need to print in A3 regularly or are printing high volumes, then that's all good and well. However, make sure your office printers only deliver exactly what you need.
3. Fewer options to choose from
When you use a traditional MPS service, your choices may be taken away from you. While there are many vendors offering a range of brands and products, some vendors exclusively sell and service a single brand, which will slim down your choices. In the market, you also have manufacturers masquerading as MPS providers, offering managed print services, but exclusively for their products. This leaves you with their offering being your only options. You can't shop around for the best price or the most optimal functions. When choosing a provider, it is a good idea to weigh up your options, brand preferences and ability of the vendor to service a range of machines.
4. No personalised service
If you are a current customer of a big vendor or manufacturer, you might be familiar with the feeling of just being another number on their client list. You've likely been stuck on hold waiting to speak to customer service or support, or have received a copy-and-paste response to an email.
Personalised service is often neglected by these large MPS vendors and manufacturers, so their customer service suffers as a consequence. When you partner with us, you are assigned a dedicated account manager, as well as a customer relationship manager.
Our MirrorWave customer survey helps us gather valuable feedback from our customers, which we act upon. Our customer feedback loop is a great tool for building personalised and enhanced relationships with our customers. And our Let's Talk staff survey helps us understand how to fine-tune our internal relationships, which has a positive spillover for our customers.
5. Put the brakes on digital growth
By their very nature, many MPS providers don't want you to digitally transform your business; their money is made through the printing and paper industries. Their key source of revenue is in print and related products, including new machines, toners and paper. This means they want you to keep on printing, to the detriment of your digital transformation.
For these suppliers, every customer that goes paperless by switching to e-signatures and digital invoicing, for example, equals a revenue loss for them. While the rest of the world moves online and away from paper-based systems, this pull to keep printing could be holding your business growth back.
How We Can Help
We can help you with a managed print service that is far from traditional. We pride ourselves on our personalised service and we ensure you only pay for the devices and consumables that you genuinely need. We aren't committed to any particular suppliers, so we can shop around and recommend the devices that suit your specific needs best.
Working with we means you can take advantage of features that save you time and money, including scanning documents to store in the cloud and printing from any device to any office printer.
This lets you better track your print spend, allocate costs and manage printer usage - giving you more control. We cover all the little details, such as automated toner delivery, so you never have to worry about running out again and have to wait in a call centre queue to re-order. We also work with you to improve your workflow and transform your business through innovative technologies like Device as a Service (DaaS) and cloud-based workflows.