Every business is different. So when it comes to printing, there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
In order to get the best possible use out of your printers, you need expert consultancy and a bespoke plan designed specifically for your situation.
Managed Print Services, or ‘MPS’ as it’s known, starts with an audit of your print environment to understand how you use printers and identify opportunities for improvements.
But when is the right time to call in the experts?
Here are five situations in which businesses should look to MPS as part of wider efforts to control costs, improve efficiency and sustainability.
1. When you need to save money
Whatever the size of your business there is always some kind of pressure to reduce costs. But there may be times when saving money becomes the top priority.
For a small business, this might be during the start-up phase or when the business starts to grow, putting new demands on the cashflow. For larger, more established businesses cost pressure might come from trading difficulties, the need to fund new products or a fresh challenge from competitors.
MPS is a way to save money and can form a useful part of any efficiency drive. With MPS, businesses can get an external assessment of how they’re using their printers and identify ways to use them more cost-effectively.
For example, by switching out old, inefficient printers for newer alternatives a business can save money on paper and other print supplies. Newer machines are also less likely to break down, saving on the cost of repair.
2. When you want to boost productivity
Along with saving money, finding ways to boost productivity is an ongoing challenge for Australian businesses.
Government figures reveal that labour market productivity remains sluggish due in part at least to a drop in capital investment. Smarter use of technology represents the best chance of breaking out of the current cycle and returning to the long-run average of productivity growth.
MPS is a good example of how technology can help businesses get more out of their resources.
An assessment of what printers a business uses and where they are located can identify opportunities to support better, more efficient working practices.
For example, swapping out a large, inefficient machine in a central location for new, scalable printers designed for each team can save time and support more efficient and collaborative working practices.
3. When your business is growing
Australian businesses can never stand still. Whether it’s pressure from competitors or disruption from new technology, change is constant.
If you run a small, growing business change is often quicker and more dramatic. You can go from a team that all fits around the same table to a business that occupies an entire office floor.
With that kind of change, your systems and processes need to be regularly reviewed, updated and overhauled. And the same goes for your printers.
MPS can help businesses identify not only what they need now but what they might need – or are likely to need – in the future.
One of the big challenges that come with getting the best use out of printers is finding solutions that can scale. MPS provides the expertise businesses need in order to avoid having to tear everything up and start again in 12 months time.
4. When you want to reduce waste
Businesses face increasing demands from politicians, employees and customers to limit their impact on the environment. This is pushing sustainability up the corporate agenda.
A study by KPMG revealed that 36 of the 50 biggest companies in Australia had identified material resource scarcity as a threat, with the majority adopting targets to reduce water, energy and paper consumption.
Managed Print Services provides an opportunity for businesses to identify and eliminate waste in how they use their printers. This goes beyond paper usage and includes strategies for reducing other print supplies and even power consumption.
Ongoing monitoring of your printer usage can form a useful part of your corporate social responsibility agenda by helping you easily track performance against targets and spot problems and opportunities a lot quicker.
5. When you want to improve security
Printer security is becoming an ever more important consideration for Australian businesses.
Getting hacked can be expensive, interrupting normal operations, requiring lengthy clean-up and undermining trust with customers. And with governments tightening up on privacy laws, businesses have an added incentive to protect their data.
Printers are now networked devices and like anything that is connected to the internet there is a small risk that they will be targeted by malicious hackers.
Perhaps your business has reached a size and stage when you feel you can no longer keep a handle on your IT security. Or maybe you have had a breach of your network. MPS can help you identify and eliminate vulnerabilities.
As well as cyber attacks, printers are also prone to human error. A simple example would be accidentally sending confidential documents to a communal printer.
MPS can find the right security solution for your business. That might be a PIN that staff need to enter before retrieving their documents, or smarter deployment of printers so that staff handling sensitive material have their own printers close to their work stations.
MPS can be tailored to fit the needs of any business, large or small. If you want to save money, improve productivity, scale your business, cut waste or strengthen security, get in touch with the team today.
