The benefits of a Managed Print Services agreement are huge!
It’s 8:30 AM and you are just crossing the threshold of your business and there are three employees at the doorstep, all with printer emergencies. Employee #1 stands before you with an empty toner cartridge and no spare. She has shaken that cartridge one time too many and it’s officially empty. Employee #2 is sheepishly staring at the floor with what appears to be a broken printer part in his hands and the need to print out a 500 page report due 15 minutes ago! Employee #3 is barking something about their printer not showing up on the network. This is all before you’ve had the opportunity to enjoy your first cup of coffee.
You take charge of the situation immediately! Tell employee #1 to call the local office supply store and get toner over to you ASAP (at whatever cost), you then scroll through a mess of names and phone numbers to find a printer tech for employee #2, and finally advise employee #3 that you are going to call the IT company to see what might be wrong. If all goes as planned, and the office supply place has the toner, the printer tech actually shows up when promised and IT doesn’t have “more important issues”, then you should be operational by end of day? What, the end of the day? But we need to get this work done now!
There is a simpler way. Managed Print Services agreements take the hassle out of knowing your current supply levels, who to call for a broken printer, and even when the network seems to have failed you. By utilizing a cloud based reporting system most Managed Print Service providers will have a snap-shot of your printer fleet and current supply levels. Reporting can be setup so that a warning is sent, and replenishment can happen automatically. By contracting these services you also now have the capability to contact a single telephone number whether it’s for a broken part, routine service or even a network outage.
Managed Print Services also gives you a true “budgetable” component to your printer fleet. With a pay-one-price model, you are able to assess each year your total cost of ownership on your printer fleet. Try to accomplish that by “piece-mealing” your approach, it would be very difficult to assign a cost. Monthly invoices also spread out the costs of keeping your printers running smoothly. There are no more months where you break the bank to keep the fleet operational.
Can managed print services help you? Absolutely! A few of the things to keep in mind are (1) size of your fleet, (2) monthly volume across the fleet, and (3) age of the fleet. These are all the variables that might affect your monthly costs and how the manage print services provider will charge for fees. With the right sized fleet, there really is no better choice.
