Would you let a baby sell you an MPS Contract?

Here is a paragraph from the latest from Managed Print Services (MPS) by the Photizo Group

"I believe that HP has seen the light and over two years ago started its major move into services – particularly managed print services. With the acquisition of EDS, HP has been able to offer customers a simpler way of managing their IT infrastructure and their printers. The recent announcement of their new MPS division again shows their services orientation."

(emphasis mine)

-- by Mike Huster, Sr. Consultant and Partner, Photizo Group

This is from Greg Walters Death of the Copier Blog

"HP has established a strong leadership position in the growing MPS marketplace, so to have the support of a company of this caliber brings a great deal of credibility to the MPS Conference and validates its importance to the MPS marketplace," said Ed Crowley, CEO and Senior Partner of the Photizo Group, which is hosting the MPS 2009 European Conference."

Two years huh? Must be nice to have a strong leadership position within the MPS marketplace with only two years experience. I suppose a giant brand name and a well known blue logo must cause some people to forget that they are essentially letting a toddler of the mps industry provide their company with a program that did not even exist a few years back.

Would you let a two year old drive your car? Do your taxes? Manage your company?

Then why would you trust one to provide your company with a managed print services program? Regardless of whether its HP, Canon, Ikon, Konica Minolta or one of the other "Big Boys" the fact remains that all of them have less than a decade experience in the MPS industry.

Sure becuase of their size and brand they may have a global presence with accounts all over the world and may very well seem like experts, but are they really? Some of these large companies are going to start going after smaller accounts and SMBs. If your the CEO of such a company again I would like to ask you:

Would you let a two year old drive your car? Do your taxes? Manage your company?

The answer is of course no.

So when your company is ready for an MPS program do your self a favor and think twice before choosing a provider with a big name and a well known logo and instead, do your homework. Chances are you will find (an albeit smaller) company that has far more years of experience in the field than these imaging industry giants who are really babies in regards to managed print services.

Everyone and their Cousin?

I just finished reading an article at business transformation resource center (here) entitled "Four Keys to Selling MPS In Tough Economic Times" within the first couple of paragraphs I came across this unsettling comment "In the last six to eight months, managed print services has become extremely hot, so much so we are seeing everybody and his cousin get involved."

I must say that to me this translates to the idea that within the realm of managed print services there is going to be a slew of "jacks of all trades" who are masters of none, well not MPS anyway. With that in mind I would like to draw attention to the following bit of information from the same article "According to MPS research and analysis firm Photizo Group, MPS contracts could grow at a 22 percent compound annual growth rate through 2012." If you are a business owner who is considering an MPS program for your business I would like to ask you, does everybody and his cousin really have the experience and expertise to successfully run an MPS program for your company and truly save you the most money while providing you with the best service? I think not...

Point: When looking for an MPS company to manage your printer fleet, do your homework! Find a company who has the experience, and references to show that they truly are MPS experts.

Hidden costs in office imaging

Hidden supply costs are HUGE!

New IDC research tries to quantify the actual cost of the printed page. A blog post last week at Docusense's Cost Per Page Solutions blog pointed to the enormous impact of administration and IT costs. But there are big hidden expenses in every aspect of the printer page.

Whenever stats like these come out, the specifics are always hard to pin down in an "across the board" way. I am certain that the hidden costs far outweigh the obvious expenses of buying, supply and servicing equipment; however, I am just as sure that the percentages change when you move the survey from large corporate settings (i.e. where they would have full-scale IT support, doc management, etc.) down to an SMB.

That's our typical printer fleet management customer and we see the supply costs routinely as both very substantial and completely unmanaged. Of course, as mentioned above, the devil's in the details. Are they more than "Admin and IT"? Who knows, but consider these "Supply Costs" categories:

1. Purchasing -- Purchase order expenses; pre-purchase due diligence by buyers; monitoring of consummables' yield; returning defectives; tracking MRA credits; etc.

2. Inventory Management -- Receiving; warehousing; end-user distribution; etc.

3. Recycling -- Those who desire to be responsible environmentally will need to collect, warehouse and dispose of empties, usually involving shipping/handling expenses (or live with a 400-year decomposition period for toners in your town dump).

4. Obsolescence -- This is enormous. All the initial costs were already spent, years ago. The consummables were bought in bulk to get end-column pricing. The printers themselves are long gone. Yet all these toner cartridges are still being stored and counted in inventory and will eventually need to be disposed of. Every penny of associated expense is a complete waste!

We added three managed print services clients recently where the sales rep's found literally thousands of dollars of new O.E.M. cartridges unopened in storage rooms all around the facilities. The only problem? -- The customers no longer have those models anywhere in their organizations!

(Be watching for "toner cartridge bargain" on eBay sometime soon.)

Seriously, though, the "soft costs" hidden in every printed page are simply amazing. There are real savings within reach of any company that will simply begin managing this typically unmanaged area of their business.

MPS-in-a-Box? Think Again!

"Do you offer managed print services?"

"Of course ... Doesn't everyone?"

Remember the old Midas commercial when a roaring, back-firing car rolls into a local service station for a tail-pipe and muffler? The customer asks, "Are you sure you have one that will fit my car?" Then the "mechanic" with a sledge hammer resting on his shoulder answers, "No problem. I can make it fit."

Off-the-shelf managed print services are like that. Someone hangs up a shingle and "Bingo!" -- they're a professional.

Today every national distributor sells its own MPS solution, office supply superstores sell theirs over-the-counter, and every manufacturer in the Business Technology Association throws their hat into the ring. Consider this post yesterday by Louella Fernandes http://www.it-director.com/business/content.php?cid=11256 ... manufacturers are trying to simplify their channel propositions to make MPS more accessible for resellers so that they do not need to invest in a costly infrastructure. In effect, instead of building their own service infrastructure, they can resell an MPS as a "white-label" service provided by a manufacturer."

Since nobody is selling office imaging equipment right now, everyone and his uncle is pumping their unique document-output-control, cost-containment, imaging-fleet-management solution.

Even if they don't know a thing about it.

"No problem. I can make it fit."

It blows my mind. Expert Laser Services is a long-established MPS company with a mature product we've been developing and implementing for 15 years, with thousands of devices already under contract. We've already made all those "costly investments in infrastructure" that Louella's talking about -- a fleet of tech vans and technicians, a trademarked MPS product, a couple of successful, growing offices.

Yet we are in competition with everyone from Xerox all the way down to the local one-man PC repair shop who bought MPS-in-a-Box?!

"No problem. I can make it fit."

Naw, I guess I'll quit whining. Now that I think of it, their MPS product really doesn't compete with ours.

Printer Fleet Management

According to Buyers Laboratory, “Ninety percent of all companies do not track their printing costs.” If your company falls into this category and you are feeling the crunch of the current economic atmosphere it would be wise for you to consider paying closer attention to what you spend on running your printers and copiers and if you are in fact running them as efficiently as possible, especially if you have no clue about how much you spend on toner, repairs and service for your machines on a monthly basis. Honestly though, who has the time to keep track of such things? Well, if you want to save serious money you'd better be ready to invest the time and put up with the stress that comes along with such an endeavor or, you could just "bring it all under the dome". What does that mean? It means saving yourself time and money by joining Expert Laser Services PrintDOME Printer Fleet Management Program.

We Micro-Manage So You Don’t Have To!

Routine inspections are the foundation of our program. We visit each printer in your fleet regularly. Our technician performs a cleaning and evaluation. Potential issues are identified and addressed before they become a problem, lessening downtime. Preventive maintenance visits are complemented by our PrintDOME printer fleet management software, providing constant evaluation of usage. Active monitoring assures a proper amount of toner and the correct cartridge is always on-hand for each machine not “just in time” — but well in advance of need. Again, as with the routine inspections, this eliminates opportunities for emergencies to arise. Constant evaluation of alerts, jams, error messages—the complete printer history!—provides all the information needed to effectively manage the fleet. Machines which need to be relocated due to changes in volume or usage can easily be strategically redeployed resulting in user productivity increases, improved cost alignment as well as longer usable equipment life.

PrintDOME™ Benefits are Remarkable:

Detailed Reports — Receive monthly customized, accurate management reports. Paperwork Reduction — One single P.O. eliminates 100’s of requisitions and P.O.’s for cartridge purchases and inventories, yields, quality of copies, routine maintenance and emergencies—everything. Out-source Your Printer “Help-desk” — Users’ single point-of-contact is a live person help-desk reachable through a supplied toll-free number. Direct-to-desk Toner Supply — Save time and effort at every step in the process: ordering; receiving; warehousing; distributing; returning defective/spent cartridges. Environmental Impact! — With our customers’ help we are keeping thousands of toner cartridges out of our landfills each year! Our Data Collection Agent requires very little bandwidth and is completely secure. Our approach has proven effective over years of performance and its success is easy to explain: We eliminate all the headaches. Expert Laser Services is responsible for toner inventories, yields, quality of copies, routine maintenance and emergencies, in other words we cover absolutely everything!