Optimising Costs with Managed Print Services

Even in an increasingly digital landscape, print continues to be an integral process for businesses of all sizes. Often the print process is a reason for enormous costs to an organization due to leakages and inefficiencies across the value chain - maintenance of printers, supplies, color prints, and security.

Outsourcing Brings Benefits

Given the dynamic business landscape, organizations must select solutions that provide good return on investment and evolve with the changing needs of the organization in order to be future-ready. In an effort to optimize their print processes, many organizations are now opening up to the idea of outsourcing their print needs to specialist providers. Outsourcing not only enables organizations to focus on their core activities, but also leverage the latest technologies. Managed Print Services (MPS), as it is commonly known, enables organizations to optimize their print processes and save up to 30% of the overall print costs.

MPS allows businesses to eliminate wasteful prints, measure costs of printing including printers, copiers, as well as the outsourced printing services. It allows for password protection of special print jobs, such as color prints, thereby eliminating unnecessary printing and reducing costs. The 'pull printing' feature can help organizations to improve security of sensitive documents, such as legal documents, by requiring the user to authenticate her identity.

Further, Managed Printing Services provides organizations with the ability to reduce operational costs by opting for cloud-based MPS and 'pay-per-use' option. That said, every organization has unique print requirements. An MPS provider can assist an organization to assess the existing process and suggest appropriate solutions for improved productivity, cost-efficiency and security.

Another major contribution of MPS is in addressing the increasing environmental concerns. Technology-driven, intelligent print management solutions allow reuse of toner cartridges, reduce energy consumption, and reduce paper use. A number of MPS providers, such as Xerox, plant a tree when a specified number of pages are printed. Therefore, through MPS, organizations can contribute towards environment protection at a minimal cost.

Conclusion

Despite a push towards paperless offices, printing and scanning still remain popular methods to access documents. Organizations would do well to use smart devices armed with the latest monitoring technologies. They can choose to deploy cost-effective print management solutions to improve the efficiency of the entire print process or outsource it to an MPS provider.

The article has been written by Neetu Katyal, Content and Marketing Consultant

She can be reached here.