One of the blogs over at CIO magazine online has a nice little summary of why businesses with multi-function printers should look into Managed Print Services. Here’s a snippet:

By partnering with a Managed Print Services (MPS) partner, organizations can assess and better manage the volume of documents flowing through their organizations and minimize the costs associated with printing, sharing and updating those documents. In fact, according to Gartner, implementing a comprehensive MPS strategy can save companies up to 30 percent annually on printing costs.

Read the whole thing here.

In my previous post, I mentioned that Standley System’s approach to Managed Print Services—or MPS—is built around diagnosing what’s ailing a company’s productivity and prescribing a solution.

Here’s a great example that is, appropriately enough, health-care related.

One of our clients is a medical clinic with several offices around the state, all tied together via the Internet.

We discovered that whenever a patient had lab results to go to the doctor, the staff faxed them from Point A to Point B, and then paid to have a courier deliver them to the doctor. This whole process took three or four days. Frequently, given the delay, the doctor would order the same labs on the patient again because they forgot or were unaware they were already done.

As many as three or four copies of the same document/file were showing up at the doctor’s office. Additionally, a copy was kept at the lab.

After our assessment, we enabled fax to IP address document delivery in doctor’s office. Now they scan the original and fax it to the doctor’s IP. The original is filed in the office where it was generated. All other copies and delivery methods are eliminated.

They have applied the same process to payables at the various clinics, where they had been dealing with the same inefficiencies, delays, mistakes and redundancies. Our method helped them avoid maintaining two sets of account payable files.

The company’s costs dropped dramatically and at the same time, their efficiency and customer satisfaction jumped higher. I love it when a plan comes together!

That the essence of MPS at our place. We just try to enable the tools people already have so they can use them best.

We do this service for free. It is part of what we like to do. “Giving the customer what they really need” is never a losing proposition for us.

One of the most frequently used and widely abused terms among copier and printer dealers these days is “Managed Print Services” or MPS.

It’s a hot concept, but everyone seems to have their own version of it. That’s a shame because at it’s heart, it’s a solution that can often make a huge amount of sense for a business that owns and operates several printers, copiers, scanners, fax machines, etc. And what business doesn’t these days?

Here is how MPS works in our company.

One of the things we’re really good at is going in and doing an inventory of a business’s fleet of equipment and interviewing their people about their work flow and how documents move around the office. For instance, we analyze what happens to a document from the moment it arrives in an envelope until it is shredded or filed. We track what is done, how often, and how long it takes. We ask questions like, “How many times does staff have to get up to go to different devices in order to file, print, store, etc.?” Then, we devise the most efficient and cost effective way to manage document handling and eliminate all kinds of waste.

Research indicates that, on average, 10% of a company’s revenue is spent on printing or documentation of some kind. Some companies are well north of that figure. With MPS, we can help them manage that down by determining what the business actually needs, instead of what they think they want based on sketchy information…or the simple force of habit.

In my next post, I’ll share a great example of what I’m talking about.