In most businesses, printing costs account for about 1 to 3% of the business’s overall budget.
If you’re a small business, you might not have the biggest budget for printing, which is where you can look to managed printed services to help you out!
But what is managed print? And how will it help your business? Keep reading to find out!
What Are Managed Print Services?
Managed print services, or MPS, is letting some external company take over your printing needs. When you first hire or consult with an external MPS company, they’ll start assessing what printing needs you to have.
They’ll look through all of your hardware, including whatever printers, photocopiers, or faxes you’re currently working with. Once they have all that information, they’ll oversee all of the hardware maintenance for your printers and other printing devices.
For example, if a printer breaks or isn’t working, they’ll come out and fix it. They’ll monitor all of the printing and report to you how it’s all running.
Many people choose to hire these MPS companies because then they don’t have to have an internal employee work on this. It saves them money and frees up their employees to do other important work to keep the business running.
Some MPS companies work on a subscription basis, so you’ll have to pay them each month. Some work on how many pages are printed. Talk with the different companies out there to see which one will offer you a better deal.
How Does it Work?
When you hire an MPS printing service, you won’t have to worry about maintaining your printers anymore. When the printer runs out of paper, you won’t have to send your employees to go get some instead of doing their usual work.
When the printer breaks, you won’t have to call your in-house IT to fix it, but instead, they can focus on other pressing issues.
The MPS service will handle all of it for you. They’ll order more paper, fix the printers, and make sure that everything runs smoothly so you don’t even have to worry about it.
Benefits
You might think that you don’t need to hire a company and that you can just do it all on your own.
However, there are actually many benefits you may not realize you need when you hire an MPS company.
Decrease Cost of Printing Internally
You may not realize it, but everything you print at your local printers costs you a lot more money than printing remotely.
Unless you’re really looking at your printing budget, you may not even realize that it’s more inefficient and costly. Generally, each printer isn’t on a network, so only one or two people are using them, which makes them very inefficient.
And even though only a handful of people are using them, they need expensive cartridges and maintenance. You may not realize all of this until an MPS company informs you about it.
Deliver Supplies
If you always find yourself running out of paper, you might want to have the MPS set up automated deliveries.
They’ll set up programs that will monitor what supplies are running low on your printers and then ship you whatever you need.
What You Should Look For
If you’re convinced that you need to hire an MPS company right away, there are a few things you should look for on your search.
Make sure you shop around so that you can get the best deal that’s suited for your needs.
Printing Needs
When you talk with these companies, be wary of if they start offering all kinds of fancy things before figuring out what you need.
Fancy equipment upgrades and complicated managed print solutions might sound nice, but step back and make sure that they can still cover what you really need to print and take care of.
Printers
If you’ve already bought a lot of printers for your business, make sure that that money doesn’t go to waste!
Ask the MPS company if they will use the printers that you already have. Many companies come in and try to sell you on the newest printers and latest technology.
However, a really good company should be able to work with what you already have. They shouldn’t try and get you to spend money on new printers unless yours are actually broken and don’t work.
Cost
Aside from finding out how much the company will cost to hire, they should let you know how much you’re paying t manage the printers right now.
Even if you haven’t been budgeting your printing costs, they should be able to tell you just how much money you’re spending on it.
As they work more and more with you, they’ll be able to give you more accurate details so this way you know how to effectively budget your money!
If you’re still not sure what to look for, make sure that you check out this link: jetadvice.com.
Learn More About Managed Print Services
These are only a few things to learn about managed print services, but there are many more benefits and advantages to hiring one!
We know that trying to find the perfect printing service company for your business can be overwhelming, but we’re here to help you narrow the search!
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