Most IT departments, especially smaller teams, are bogged down by managing printers and print-related helpdesk queries. While crucial for business operations, managing print often leaves IT teams with little time for more critical tasks. 

A lot of businesses make this mistake and end up spending more. Worst of all, their IT processes and print services remain under-optimised. Managed Print Services (MPS) offers businesses an effective solution in the form of centralised print fleet management. 

Print management software and services were usually offered alongside hardware and office equipment back then. They were simply a way for businesses to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Today, managed print services are offered by most office equipment resellers, as well as print manufacturers and IT service providers.

Since providers began offering them to organisations to help with document management, MPS quickly became popular among businesses. Organizations found it efficient, convenient, and cost-effective. The cost savings that MPS offered were from reduced operational, energy, and office supply costs. 

A typical MPS offering ideally provides a complete managed print solution for the following:

• Full visibility of printer fleet (provides the type and number of available printers)
• Paper, ink, toner, and other supplies and consumables needed on a regular basis
• IT support to quickly identify when a printer, multifunction printer, or copier has a fault/error
• Data on the following:
  • Number of pages produced by office workers, mobile workers and production print operations
  • User to printer ratio
  • Toner, paper, and consumables spend
  • Who are using the devices and what for

With new solutions like pull printing systems and document process automation, MPS has become more widely accepted by organisations. Research from the International Data Corporation (IDC) shows that businesses can save up to 30% of their annual print spend with MPS. 

So, the question for today’s suppliers is this: How do you further differentiate your managed print services? In such a saturated market offering a lot of value-added services, is there still a way to gain an edge?

Leverage Cloud-Based Print Infrastructure

The one area that most MPS providers don’t talk about is print infrastructure.

In most cases, the print server is a necessary commodity that a customer sources and manages through their IT department. However, with the advent of cloud-first solutions, more people are welcoming the concept of moving the IT infrastructure to the cloud. This streamlines workflows and addresses most issues associated with on-premise infrastructures. 

If you’re an MPS provider, you probably want to focus on print cost reduction and optimization, right? Why not truly differentiate your offering by extending this to the print infrastructure? By introducing cloud-based print, you can help your customer reap the benefits of having a cloud-based print infrastructure. 

Offering a cloud printing solution also results in IT optimisation and simplification. Cloud-based print services will lessen the burden on IT by getting rid of most of the work surrounding print server maintenance. 

For better optimization, you can also offer clients a fully-featured single print driver to support their entire print fleet. The cost savings offered by removing print servers and introducing a single print driver can be dramatic.

Moving to a true multi-tenant cloud-based application benefits customers and providers alike. As the provider, cloud-based print offers you a simpler way to deploy and manage print hardware for all customers. A hybrid cloud solution eliminates the need for on-site technicians to deploy or troubleshoot printers. 

By utilizing a cloud printing solution, you can manage the deployment and troubleshooting from a single web-based console.  This allows you to optimize your internal processes and provide faster resolution to customer issues.

Benefits of Cloud-Based Print

Cloud-based print management offers customers ease of use. With it, they can send their print jobs from their PC or mobile to the nearest printer. This allows for secure printing minus the hassle of maintaining an on-site print server. 

Organisations can also track print utilization for better security. Some of the other benefits are:

• Offers secure print release to the customer’s print environment while streamlining procedures and reducing costs
• Eliminates the need for physical print servers, queue management, multiple print drivers, and troubleshooting help desk calls to IT
• Holds print jobs in the cloud until a user is ready to verify their identity and release the print job 
• Eliminates the risk of security breaches due to documents being read or accessed at the printer tray
• Saves on printing costs from paper and ink due to lesser unclaimed documents or errors in printing
• Improves productivity by allowing printing jobs to be done in one go
• Promotes time savings thanks to improved print efficiency and fewer errors

How Organizations Are Leveraging Cloud Managed Print Services

EveryonePrint’s cloud MPS Hybrid Cloud Platform (HCP) offers a convenient print infrastructure solution. With HCP, organisations can seamlessly migrate their on-premise print environment to a cloud-based service. The platform can easily be delivered as a SaaS offering or as an on-premise private cloud.

One of our customers, Intracoastal Realty, was able to adopt a cloud-first strategy with regard to their print infrastructure. They were able to streamline their print workflows despite having ten offices and over 600 real estate agents, thanks to HCP. A cloud-based solution was appealing to them, as their location was prone to hurricanes and severe weather disturbances.

After a trial of the HCP, the company was able to successfully adopt a cloud-based print infrastructure. They currently have 18 printing devices installed across ten locations and used by employees and agents. 

Chief Information Officer John Schweighardt talks about how the switch to HCP has helped their business:

“Printing is a heavily used function, to put this into perspective, on a typical month our printers process around 10,000 print jobs, equating to over fifty-thousand printouts. As a small IT department, the only way we could support the business’ growth trajectory was to streamline processes and automate as much as we can. Everything is so much simpler now, when we hire a new agent, we simply load the software from the intranet, and they are connected to the print infrastructure without having to come into the office. Our focus now is on reviewing the added benefits, rather than installing, managing, and maintaining print drivers and doing all of the updates when we roll out a new printer, or when an agent buys a new computer, that’s a huge time saver,” he shares.

Another thing that Schweighardt cites as a great value-add is HCP’s secure infrastructure. “Pull print functionality means printouts are only released once the agent authenticates via a PIN code at a printer. That’s been a huge value-add as we know sensitive documents such as offers or contracts for example aren’t lying idle on printers where anyone can see them,” says Schweighardt.

Become a Partner

Become a partner now and make cloud printing a standard part of your MPS offering. Find a way to truly differentiate yourself from the competition while offering your customers dramatic savings and optimisation. Get in touch with us if you have any questions, concerns, or partnership ideas — we’d love to hear your thoughts.