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.

4.Who own the costs, who own the budgets and who will benefit from the savings

• Print costs are spread across your entire company. If you are to successfully evaluate a vendors proposition you need to know where these are and who owns them and how are they measured because they are critical to question 5.

5.Who needs to be in the decision process

• IT, Facilities, Finance, Purchasing, Focus user group, HR and Sponsor are some do you have more?

6.How much effort and time for how much return?

• Typically savings from new processes follow the 70/30 rule. This is the last 30% of the ‘savings’ requires 70% of the effort, time, work, focus, change etc. Quite often Vendors assume that you will be happy with only the 70% savings and not try for the last 30% due to the amount of work required. This may even be true in your case, but that was not what you asked for when issued the tender! Ask your vendors for breakdowns on how your savings will be achieved and over what time and with how much effort. What are your limitations? When will you stop chasing savings? Have you identified your own 70/30 position?

7.Do you have any print or MPS skills in-house?

• How much preparation work can you do before asking in the vendors? How will you be able to check the vendor’s figures are accurate? How much resources will need to be allocated for this project. Who will project lead and liaise day to day with the vendors during the assessment, the proposal, the implementation, and the critical first 6 months

8.How will outsourcing your print affect your other IT services

• Print is more than just the paper and hardware. Your printers will need drivers loaded and updated on the workstations. Drivers loaded and updated on the servers. Print management software hooked into your network and possibly requiring remote secure access. Who will own the help desk? How will the MPS help desk interface with your IT helpdesk.

9.What do you tell the users?

• When you start working with vendors on an MPS project they will need to audit your existing print environment. This will mean they will come into contact with your users (or they should if the are doing a true audit) who will require an explanation of what is being planned and what the changes will mean to them and to their work processes. Failure to communicate clearly with the user community can cause serious delays to a project. 

10.How will you measure the success of the MPS system you buy during the 1st year of its operation?

• When you have chosen and implemented your MPS system how will you measure that the vendor is delivering all the savings and the services promised. What milestones will you set for your vendor? What tools will you use to keep track that they are delivering? What power will you have to force your vendor to deliver what was agreed?

One further question you should really include is how you will exit your contract with your chosen MPS vendor. An MPS contract is much like a marriage and come the end it can turn into a very nasty divorce unless you make sure you have clear agreements as to when it ends, how it ends, who owns the equipment (that includes HW, supplies, drivers, software, spares, servers, call history, audit trails etc) and the clean passover of all information to you or your next MPS vendor. Failure to define a clear exit stratagy could leave you with additional costs (just google some of the copier lease stories) that you may not be able to afford.