Moving you towards a less-paper office!
(800) 346-7890

Strategies

MPS Myth Number One…

July 5, 2011 in MPS an Odyssey by Patti Bemis  |  No Comments

So you got that call too, right?  In fact 100 calls a day telling you they have the secret to saving your organization 30% in printing costs.  And so the MPS Odyssey begins and you set out on that epic journey in search of the best Managed Print Service Provider in town…

Managed Print Services Myth or Fact Number One…

Any Managed Print Service Provider knows how to, and truly wants to, help you reduce costs by 30%

So here he comes, your savior, your Managed Print Service Consultant.  Sounds important right?  Sounds unique right?  Well, actually yes and no, just in that order.  What I mean is yes.  It is fact that, when fully understood by both the provider and the customer, Managed Print Services can be critically important for not only controlling costs, but increasing efficiencies across departmental platforms throughout an organization.  A task so monumental, it is guaranteed to cement your position with your company for eternity!  And I also mean no, the title is not at all unique to the document imaging industry; the real deal is.   In fact, in most cases, it is just a load of you know what… CRA___  !!!

The truth is, MPS has become a buzz word for industry reps and if they don’t have the experience and training, then they won’t be important or effective at what they claim to be their expertise.  So how do you cull out the real expert, the one who is going to make you a company legend?  It’s like trying to find your loyal Eumaeus in a driving rain storm of copier dealers, printer companies and IT consulting firms.  The more of them that rain down upon you, the cleverer the crafting of the Cost-per-Page offerings, the harder it is to find the real deal.

I am not saying he or she doesn’t exist; it just can be as frustrating and full of detours as Odysseus’s homeward journey trying to find one who really has your organization’s best interest in mind.   Why? Because depending on whom you speak to, the definition of Managed Print Services can be as varied in meaning as the many disguises and deceptions Odysseus employs to navigate his homeward path.  Photizo Group, a leading research and consulting firm specializing in the Managed Print Service Industry(MPS) stated it best …  “As companies seek out possible MPS partners they need to be able to discriminate between sales fluff and real experience.”*

SO who is your savior, your Eumaeus?  Is it the copier guy, the printer guy, your trusted IT consultant?  Who has the answers?   Stay tuned…

* Facts provided by Photizo Group’s eBook: “A CXO’s Guide to Managed Print Services”.  E-mail me at pbemis@reliablenh.com, or call 800-346-7890 x108 to learn more!

MPS? We don’t need no stinkin’ strategy!

April 19, 2011 in Uncategorized by Pam Morin  |  No Comments

Toner Truck WreckWe do occasional printer service repairs for a local organization.  They only call on us when IT has given up on repairing the printer themselves. When one of our technicians asked an IT tech how she felt about working on printers, she responded with a strong dislike for dealing with the printers.  They are time consuming and she doesn’t have resources to properly fix them. Like most IT department technicians the mechanical workings of a printer are not her strong points.

This facility in 2010 spent $14,300 on printer related maintenance kits, technician labor, and break/fix parts with us alone. That does not include toner or new hardware, since they don’t purchase that from us, I don’t know for sure what they spent on these items, however, knowing that this organization employs 1,481 people and customers of ours similar in size and industry spend around $130 per employee on toners and new hardware per year, it could be as much as $196,973.  That’s a “guesstimate” of $211,273 that they spent to print for one year.

We realized that we were not best servicing this customer with just break/fix service on an as needed basis.  We talked to them about remote device monitoring, just-in-time toner delivery and print fleet management strategies.  We ran reports for the CEO, CIO, IT manager, and purchasing manager of the work we have done.  The numbers didn’t lie – about 30% of their service fees were due to bad compatible toner cartridges purchased from a company that does not specialize in printers.  Another 20% were common failed parts.  Our technicians check on common failed parts and and would have fixed them before they caused downtime and damage to the machine.

This organization currently purchases their toner and printing supplies from a “big box” retailer.  They believe they get the lowest prices this way.  However, their perception of value is a little off – managed print (managed print is not just “cost-per-page”) has proven to drastically reduce 90% of the associated costs with maintaining printers.  For every $100 spent on laser printer cartridges, an organization with an un-managed print environment spends approximately $900 on:

  • office real estate
  • employee time to change cartridges and remove jams
  • purchasing/receiving employee time
  • disposing the old toner
  • IT personnel time
  • paper wasted on bad prints
  • break/fix service on un-maintained machines
  • energy wasted on underutilized machines

I don’t understand it.  They have to buy the toner from someone.  Why not buy it and get service for free from a locally owned and operated business partner, who stands behind their products, and is willing to help manage neglected assets that no one wants to deal with for a savings of somewhere in the $15K ballpark?

  • Get E-mail Updates