The following appears on valley businessjournal.com
Have you calculated how much time and money you spend monthly maintaining your printers? This estimate should include ordering toner, break/fix, regular maintenance, and ongoing issues that may be decrease your printer’s efficiency. According to Gartner, a leading industry analyst, the average company is spending up to 3% of its total revenue per year on document output.
With Managed Print Services, you can encompass all printer related costs and maintenance under one monthly operational cost, eliminating unexpected costs. IDC, a leading market intelligence firm, found in a June 2010 study that a robust managed print services program can reduce your print operation costs by as much as 28%.
Managed Print is a service that gives you peace of mind so you never have to worry about running out of toner or having to pay a printer technician to fix your printer when it’s down. With Managed Print, you know down to the penny how much each color and black/white print costs you. The program is setup on cost per image or cost per copy (CPI or CPC), so you only pay for what you print. This CPI includes the cost of maintenance, break/fix, automated toner and most consumable replenishment and also includes a dedicated phone number to call for support. Additionally, you have access to monitor your printer, request additional toners if you have a large job coming up, or track your shipments in your company’s own online portal.
The Managed Print service begins starts with your trusted IT Company installing a data collection agent (DCA) onto your network. The DCA only monitors network printers and it uses an algorithm that tracks your usage and habits to best estimate when you will need products and services so that they arrive just in time. When researching companies with Managed Print Services, you’ll want to consider these factors:
- Security – Do you feel comfortable giving that company access to your network for monitoring?
- Assessment – Will they do a free assessment of your current estimated costs and how much you can save with Managed Print?
- Technology – Do they have reliable infrastructure and knowledge in the Managed Print industry?
- Referrals – Ask for references of their existing Managed Print customers and ask those customers how the program has been working for them.
Managed Print allows you to think less about managing your printers and supplies and enables you to focus on what’s truly important, your business.