Will the real MPS please stand up!

The more I look the more I am coming to the belief that the number of companies that actually understand what a real MPS is are very, very few.


From my own research I find a huge number of people talking about and offering to provide an MPS service but when you lift the lid what you find is still a simple 'pay for page' or ‘click charge’ offering with nothing else behind it but wrapped in some nice MPS marketing.

When are we going to get some sort of clear understanding that to provide an MPS you have to be able to fully understand not only the print side (hardware, supplies and service) but also the network side (drivers, operating systems, help desk support, desk side support at a network and local level) The document side (applications, document management, scan to archive, business document process, work flow), the user side (Accessibility, functionality, habits, wants, needs, wishes, emotions), The Finance side (reduced purchasing resources, full visibility of all services, audited cost savings, comprehensive SLA’s covering guaranteed cost savings with planned future reduction in print volumes and costs, planned annual device rightsizing over the contract period and simplified exit stratagy) and most important of all help, guidance and support to integrate the print (MFP) platforms into the clients business processes to increase efficiency and cost effectiveness of all paper or digital document workflow.

This requires the provider (and the client) to have a full understanding of where they are, where they want to be and how they intend to get there.

To use a well known saying, “An MPS engagement should be a long and profitable journey (for both parties) not just a final destination”.

The MPS objective strategy

A Managed Print Services strategy requires a clear definition of the objectives to be achieved from both parties.

The Organisation

One of the key steps in any MPS project is to identify the key stakeholders and information holders that need to be involved. Typically you will need to include IT, Purchasing, Legal, Finance, Facilities, Users groups and maybe HR but you need to make sure you are covering and including the following.

• Who owns the budgets for funding an MPS 
• Who will benefit from the savings of an MPS 
• Who will be involved in implementing an MPS 
• Who will be affected by the installation of an MPS 
• Who will be the Sponsor for the project. 

Most vendors view that the objective is simply to replace the existing devices on your network with their (newer) devices. That is not an MPS strategy. From your point of view, a managed print services strategy should include discussion of some or all of these points:


Identify your clients objectives

• How will the MPS provide improved access to information  
• Improve quality of customer-facing documents  
• Cost effectively incorporate color in business documents  
• limit unnecessary colour usage 
• Ensure Compliance, Regulatory, Security  
• Streamline document and business processes and increase user efficiency 
• Develop processes that are concurrent instead of linear  
• Right-size and right-purpose the output fleet  
• Control supply costs  
• Control supply inventory-provide just in time supply  
• Automate meter reporting of devices with audit trail 
• Contain provisions for proactive service to reduce or eliminate downtime  
• Manage the lifecycle of output devices  
• Provide for business changes (department downsizing or relocation, new projects, new feature requirements, device types not already in vendors portfolio) 
• Reduce or eliminate desktop printing  
• Provide cost effective print output based upon rules and permissions  
• Decrease waste/environmental impact  
• Develop an ongoing review schedule to measure, manage, and improve

10 questions to ask yourself if you’re thinking about a Managed print service.

Often when talking with customers about Managed Print Service offerings I am surprised how many of them have little or no information about their own real print infrastructure, its costs or its impact on business processes, other than what their vendors tell them after doing a quick audit. So before you start talking to your print and copier suppliers about a managed print service here are some questions you really need to ask yourself (and be able to answer truthfully).

1.How much do you really know about your print infrastructure?

• Just counting the pages or printers is nowhere near enough information to be able to even start evaluating MPS offerings. You need to know why they are there, who is using them and what for. Only then can you see what the impact from an MPS vendors offer and if the change will be good or bad.

2.How much do you know about your real print costs?

• Using the manufacturers ‘best guess’ average page coverage and cost to work out your print expenses just is not enough. Document types and styles are changing; the average web page and PDF document uses far more toner today due to graphics, fonts and colour. You need to know where all the costs are if you are to correctly calculate the real savings from an MPS offering. (A portion of them will be your printers, their supplies, paper, service, support, but also you need to include people and business processes.) How do you measure user time, helpdesk costs, server and workstation driver support?

3.How much do you know about how print affects your business documents and business processes?

• Which are really valuable to your business, which are just day to day and which are pure waste? Even today business documents are still the life blood of a company. Buying a MPS is the first step towards Document Automation and Management, how will you know if the MPS you are buying will help you or hinder you when you start to implement document management.

MPS Managed Print System or Managed Phone System?

Would you buy a Managed phone system the same way you buy a Managed print system?

If a consultant came into your company and said:

“Let us manage your phones system and we can reduce your phone costs by 40% to 50%.” “Because of our expertise its easy for us to see that in every office there sits a phone on ever desk; most are used less than 12% per day.” Their Solution is simple and very cost effective: “You have too many phones, each one is costing you a fortune, you have no control over how they are used and the number of wasted calls is rising every year adding to your uncontrolled costs. Let us take over that responsibility, we will manage your phones and through our expertise we will make it more cost effective!” and to prove it they ask if they can do a quick ‘free’ audit to show just how much you could save!

So (based on a quick add up of your last months calls), 5 weeks later they are back in your office showing you charts and graphs and pages of data which they say proves that your costs are out of control and far higher than they should be or you expected.

•  They can, they say, remove around 20% of the fixed costs and another 20% of the soft costs in running the phone system.  
• This will, over time, give you a total savings of 40% and possibly more in the future. 
• Full reporting system showing where costs and ‘some’ of the savings are coming from. 
• Simple budgeting (one bill per month for all calls from all phones, But can be itemised by phone or user if required). 
• All Phones will be replaced with new ones, operated, programmed, managed, serviced and new phone help desk will be set up and manned, all under the simple low cost monthly click contract.  
• SLA’s to guarantee 99% operational time of all phones.  
• Total call management using user Swipe ID cards identifying user, call, cost, duration and location.

  What they will do for you is:

• Remove all personal phones from all employees’ desks 
• Centralise phones banks around work areas in common corridors or small rooms 
• 1 green phone for internal @ rate of .01€c per call minute, (min 10 000 minutes per month) 
• 1 black phone for local outside calls @ .05€c per call minute (min 20 000 minutes per month) 
• 1 red phone for international € rate of .25€c per call minute. (min 10 000 minutes per month) 
• If a user uses an international or local phone for internal calls they will be charged at international or local rates  
• All calls will go through our telephone service exchange (for itemised billing info) this may cause a small delay in connection but rarely causes (us) a problem  
• For all calls over 10 minutes users will be redirected to use the super low cost phones on the 3rd floor. (Or they will be billed a surcharge) 
• Incoming calls will be held until the user identifies them selves through the use of the swipe card at any phone bank. Then all calls waiting will be listed for the user to scroll through until they find the one they want and then connect to.  

All you have to do is sign the contract and they will do the rest

Now does this sound something you would like to implement in your company?

 NO?

So why would you want to do it if they just replace the word phone with the word printer!
 

For many people the savings indicated on side of the Managed Print services box from the major manufacturers are so large that they forget to look into the box right down to the bottom to find out how it’s arrived at. This is I suppose not a surprise as most people do not really understand their existing print system, its complicated, it covers all aspects of their business, too many people own bits of it and they have no real holistic visibility of it. So the smoke and mirrors marketing put in front of them can be very appealing.

 But before you sign that MPS document think again!.

Printing and the Environment

As organisations in Sweden look for more ways of reducing their environmental impact, Green IT seems to be a major area of interest. The Kammarkollegiet (gov think tank) recently commissioned Naturvårdsverket (EPA) to develop a proposal for a Green IT environment action plan for the public sector.However when reviewing available reports from their recent web presentation, office printing seems to be very low on their priorities which is strange if you consider the data below.

According to research from InfoTrends, 779 billion sheets of paper were used in homes and offices across Western Europe in 2008. HP estimates that 53 trillion pages will be printed worldwide in 2010 alone.

Gartner, IDC, Xerox, Lexmark, etc estimate that the average office worker (banks, government, Lawyers, accountants, Insurance) print around 10 000 pages per year.

Of these 10 000 pages, only around 40% actually leave the office (are sent to clients) IDC report. The remaining 60% or 6000 pages per person per year are either filed (15% to 20%) or thrown away.

But what is the expected annual environmental and financial impact of printing in a typical organisation with 1000 computer users?

• Paper consumed ....................10 000 000 sheets
• Toner cartridges consumed ..............1 000 cartridges
• Printers used ............................330 units
• Water consumed  ....................3 405 000 litres
• CO2 generated  ...........................6,4 Tonnes
• Electricity used ) ...................610 000 Kw
• Oil  ...................................3 500 litres of Oil
• Estimated annual financial cost .   3 400 000 Kr

Then there is the cost of recycling all that paper. How much is reused, burned or dumped? And of course the transportation costs in delivering and removing it. Now if we do this calculation for the entire office workforce of Sweden the figures would be frightening!

Where are the savings?