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!.