Managed Print Service

If your business is reliant on printers, for documents, labels, blueprints, or anything else, you know how much time and money can be wasted on print. You can potentially benefit from Managed Print Services (MPS). These services include a wide range of activity and supply management that can save you money. Here we make the business case for outsourcing your printing needs and saving some of that money you’ve been wasting.

Managed Print Services is an umbrella term. It includes:

• Routine Printer Maintenance
• Toner and Print Supply Monitoring and Ordering
• Software Updates
• Help Desk Support
• Analysis of Print Activity to identify wasteful printing

This group of services is generally wrapped up into a “per page” pricing model. This allows you to pay by usage with the costs it takes to successfully print one page.

---

---

You may read that list and think that these are certainly tasks you, or your IT staff, can handle in house. And you are mostly right. However, ask yourself these questions:

• How much time can you afford to spend on monitoring your ink levels, ordering supplies, and troubleshooting printer issues?
• What business functions are you not giving your time to when you are dealing with your printers?
• How much time does your IT staff spend on print-related issues?
• Could your IT staff be using that time to find ways to enhance or grow your business instead of fire-fighting?

When you think of your work load in terms of what you are doing versus what you should be doing, it’s plain to see why outsourcing functions like printing is a smart call.

Every facet of Managed Print Services can help you save money and time.

Routine maintenance elongates the life expectancy of your hardware. That means you purchase less printers over time as well as decrease the likelihood of downtime. Supply ordering is simple enough, but monitoring the levels and getting them ordered before you run out again saves you, again, from downtime. Software updates are more critical than ever with the increase in cybersecurity breaches these days. Help desk support gives you access to expert technicians that can potentially fix your issue in a single phone call versus an in-house staffer poking at the printer trying to diagnose it.

Some of the biggest savings come from the print analysis. There are many ways to lean the print operations of a business. If there are more printers than necessary, you may be wasting money on unused capacity. You may be printing at best quality for documents that only require a draft level. Little bits here and there all add up to major waste. An expert analyst can help identify waste and eliminate it, saving you money in the process.

Great Lakes is a Managed Print Provider

We offer a Managed Print service that can potentially cut your print expense in half. Begin with a free assessment for 30 days. We can see look at your print use and decide if managed print makes sense for your operations.

If you leave kids alone in a kitchen to make themselves dinner, there is likely to be some unexpected use of food and utensils and plenty of unnecessary waste. When it comes to printing, if left unsupervised, your staff will do the exact same. It’s easy to be wasteful when it’s not you footing the bill, which is why you need a Managed Print program. Managed Print Services (MPS) are intended to effectively control the costs and monitor the efficiencies of a highly uncontrolled and costly business function. Here is a quick list of costs, obvious and less so, that a managed print program can save you.

Hard Cost Savings (These can represent a 30-40% reduction of current costs)

Print Supplies. Toner, ink, fusers, etc. all add up in terms of cost. MPS can offer toner at discounted rates over office supply depots due to economies of scale in ordering. They can replace your supplies as needed, instead of you stocking them up in house. Then, when a machine gets outmoded, you don’t have a stockpile of toner that is now worthless.

Identification of Unnecessary Printing. MPS will track your printing remotely. This gives them information like who is printing and how much they’re printing. The users that have their own printers are tremendous material wasters because while they use them less, they cost the business the same amount in toner, power, and maintenance as any other machine. MPS helps identify where waste is occurring and establish plans to reduce it which can save you money.

Service and Maintenance. Keeping your printers running optimally means regularly scheduled maintenance. In the event of an issue, repairs take time too. On average, up to 50% of help desk calls are print-related. MPS can eliminate that time waste and extend the life of your IT investment.

Soft Cost Savings (These can represent another 10-20% reduction of costs)

Administration of Print Supplies. That toner isn’t ordering and replacing itself. Someone has to take the time to recognize it’s empty, order it, receive it, and install it.

Maximize Usage. Your IT hardware is rarely utilized within its recommended usage guidelines (think of the kids in the kitchen example). By monitoring print activities, your staff will be held accountable for what they’re printing. Knowing they’re being monitored will go a long way in discouraging unnecessary printing and misuse of company resources.

Giving “Phil” His Time Back. You may have an in-house IT person who can help you with printer issues. But, everytime he’s called to do that, he is losing time he could be spending on forward-thinking IT projects that can help improve the business. The less time he spends fighting fires, the more time he has to innovate. If you don’t have an IT person, you have a “Phil”. This is the person that has the misfortune of a basic working knowledge of how to repair printers and computers that everyone in the office calls on when they have an issue. Phil, no doubt, has an actual job function that he is being pulled from every time someone asks. Let’s give Phil his time back!

Driver Maintenance. Hardware drivers need updated to function effectively. These updates are particularly critical if your printer exists on a network. Your printers are just as susceptible to cyber attack as your computers and servers. Updating drivers takes time.

Great Lakes Computer is a trusted Managed Print Provider.

Managed Print Services bring control and cost savings to your print activities. We offer a Managed Print service that can potentially cut your print expense in half. Begin with a free assessment for 30 days. We can see look at your print use and decide if managed print makes sense for your operations.

The Managed Print service by GLC includes Toner along with repair and maintenance services, all for about the same amount you’re paying for an OEM Toner alone!

What you can expect:

• All inclusive plan: everything is included except the paper (i.e. toner, maintenance kits, all parts, labor, etc)

• Lower print costs with 10 – 30% savings on overall printing costs

• The program is billed on a “per page” basis, which means how much you pay per month will depend upon how much you print

• Preventative printer maintenance to increase uptime and reduce printer repair service calls

• Automated print supply ordering and trouble notification

• Less IT involvement with printing problems

• Precise management of print resources to control and reduce print cost

• Your printers are monitored remotely, enabling us to catch problems early and resolve them more efficiently. We monitor the toner level of a printer, any errors that are generated, as well as the page count. GLC can then produce various reports with information that gives you a better overview of your print operations, plus insights as to how you can further reduce your costs.