The “M” in MPS – Are all Vendors Alike?

So you are thinking about Managed Print Services for your organization and looking for a vendor? How do you decide who will provide you with the best program?

The Challenge

As you interview vendors you are going to notice that all of them have great sales presentations with lots of promises of cost reductions, fleet optimization and reducing the time you and your staff spend managing your printing environment. The MPS marketing strategy is mature enough today that most everyone knows all of the buzz words and catch phrases, so how do you differentiate one from the other?

There are a number of factors to consider but if you are looking for a comprehensive program that will deliver on all the promises of MPS – and there are many – I suggest you take a good look at the “M” in your potential vendor(s) program.

The Problem (an opinion)

Now let me simply state the problem as I see it today: most vendors are not delivering on the full promise of MPS. As I have stated in previous postings here my experience is that once they take over the service and supply of your network laser printers and begin to collect the resulting income stream there is limited effort to improve your environment beyond selling you additional hardware – which may or may not improve your environment?

A Cause

As someone who interfaces between the client and service providers I have come to some conclusions as to one of the major causative factors and it is the “M”.

To explain this let me use two real world examples:

I have one client I work with who is contracted with a vendor for a comprehensive managed program. This vendor has an entire team of personnel assigned to the task of supporting their MPS clients and dedicated to solving problems, analyzing data, providing recommendations for improvement and implementing strategies and policies.

While not perfect, this vendor is making very good faith efforts to deliver on the MPS promise.

Another client is contracted to a different, still substantial vendor but the contrast is the account management team is the sales representative, service manager and branch manager. While these are all good folks they simply do not have the bandwidth to provide the level of management support required for a comprehensive MPS engagement.

The differentiator between these two vendors is not the promises they made or the benefits they presented but rather the commitment they have made to delivering on them.

This is not a unique case, I see this differentiation among a number of the vendors I have dealt with and client engagements I have been involved with.

How do I Determine Which Vendor has the Best “M”?

The simple answer to the above question is “by asking the right questions and performing the appropriate due diligence” when considering your vendor options.

I can tell you that after assisting a number of clients with this process you can determine who is going to provide the best management in advance. Whether your process is a simple client/sales engagement or a full RFP process similar to those I manage for clients, the right questions will yield responses that provide all the clues you need.

If you are looking for a comprehensive program to yield long-term benefits and if your only contact is the sales professional, sales manager and service manager then beware – demand to find out who will be supporting your program and what their roles will be. Make sure these folks are not merely clerical personnel who they have brought from the office to impress you but support resources you can reach out to and depend on.

For more information please feel free to contact me at (ghawkins@buscomgroup.com ) at your convenience.

Where Have All The Phases Gone?

After viewing vendor MPS programs and talking to you, the end-user clients I am beginning to wonder where have all the phases gone? The more I explore the more it seems that these theoretical phases are just that – theory. My real question is what long-term plan they belong to; providing you with the “managed” component of MPS or waiting for you to forget about the promises made to phase in your expected benefits.

Phase One And Then?

How many of you have contracted with a vendor for managed print services to find that after offering up your fleet and paying a few months worth of invoices the program results in nothing more than a cost per page service and supply contract – fleet management.

What reports are you receiving to help improve your document output environment? Are they limited to how much your fleet is producing and how well your new vendor is servicing them?

Have you found that most of the management recommendations you receive are for additional or new technology investments you need to make?

If so, how does this help you to create a world-class document output environment: how does it reduce expenses, improve productivity or make for greater user satisfaction?

How Do You Get What You Expected?

As you consider entering into a managed print services relationship you need to do a better job of determining which vendor can simply talk the talk and which can illustrate their ability to deliver the results you are looking for. Just like interviewing a new employee, past performance is a good predictor of future success; do not accept vendor sales presentations that tell you what they did for other clients but demand they clearly explain in detail how they are going to meet your objectives. Require and read a business proposal that addresses your environment, organizational politics and goals.

Is your current vendor agreement based on a contract presented by that vendor? If so, how does this boilerplate document meet your specific needs any better than the last lease or service agreement you had in place. It is my suggestion that these contracts represent a program-in-a- box and can provide little more than the previously mentioned fleet management.

A managed print services engagement, like any other professional services contract, should be customized to your project, contain a detailed scope of work and clearly outline how services will be delivered and the responsibilities of both parties. In addition, I would suggest it defines success and failure and contains remedies for lack of performance.

This discussion reminds me a bit of the current political discourse in America, Many, including me believe that we deserve the government we currently have. Until we demand better and pay attention to the result we will not get better.

The same goes for the state of MPS; if you, the client demand more the service providers will be forced to improve their capabilities and resulting performance. If you never call in your provider and question what happened to the other phases I am confident many will conveniently forget about them.

Part of the problem is MPS is relatively new in the industry and even though many copier and printer dealers realize they need to participate they are struggling with the how. This goes back to my earlier point; you need to separate those who can talk from those who know how to do.

Summary

For those of you, who are truly looking to realize the benefits of a world-class managed document output environment you have to take some responsibility, just like any other business venture you undertake:

• Educate yourself on what MPS can and should be
• Understand the differences between managing your document output environment and fleet management
• Define your own objectives, do not let a vendor determine them for you since this is a basic conflict of interest
• Create a statement of work based on your own goals and expectations, do not enter into a boilerplate MPS agreement
• Inspect what your vendor is doing and provide them with proper reinforcement

Like anything else, as an educated and motivated client you will realize the benefits you are looking for and may locate where the mysterious phases have been hiding.

If these opinions and discussion caught your attention and you would like to pursue it further please contact me (ghawkins@buscomgroup.com ) at your convenience.

Least Cost Printing – Why Users Don’t Print to the MFD

Many of you have attempted to reduce your document output expenses by investing in multifunction devices and connecting them to your network. The question is how many of you have realized the results you hoped for?

Success Stories

As I talk to organizations across the country and spectrum of purpose I have found a relatively small percentage that has succeeded. Almost without exception, those that met their objectives did it by removing their cartridge-based printer fleet; thereby forcing users to use the component-based multifunction devices. It is rare to find a success story within the population that left the printer fleet intact.

Where Do the Pages Go?

The observation stated above comes from the data within the detailed assessments I perform as part of my client engagement. Even today, in mixed environments the number of pages produced on printers typically exceeds those produced on MFDs in a truly mixed environment. My experience shows the hoped-for shift in user behaviors and pages did not occur on a large scale, if at all.

Why User Behaviors Did Not Change

Let me share with you a few high-level findings that are common upon an assessment of document output environments similar to yours:

• Most users are totally unaware of the page cost differential
• Many users do not have MFD print drivers loaded on their workstation
• A large number of users are unaware of workflows that would be of benefit
• Inadequate training led to fear of change

While these seem like very simple “duh” statements they are significant to the failure of most attempts to print to lower cost per page MFDs.

Awareness

When performing a detailed environmental assessment I spend a great deal of time within the user community. Invariable during the device discovery process or user interviews I am questioned as to the cause and purpose of the project.

When I explain the high-level expenses associated with document output (possibly millions of dollars) users are quite surprised. When the discussion becomes more granular it often becomes disbelief; they simply had no clue that their desktop inkjet may be generating expenses as high as $0.25 per page or that the cost per page of the MFD (copier) is half that of their laser printer. Once that discussion is complete (proven) and expense reduction tied into something important to them (maintaining their benefits for example) their attitude typically changes to one of support.

Access to Devices

Very often during one of my user discussions they relate that they do not use the MFD because they do not have access to it. Further discovery usually uncovers that they have access to it but do not have a print driver, or the correct print driver loaded on their workstation.

There are actually two somewhat separate issues here, ability to print to the MFD at all and ability to access the features and functions offered by the MFD.

During a typical on-site discovery I load quite a few print drivers for the MFD that should be used. When shown the correct print driver and the functions they can access I usually encounter a little bit of excitement exhibited by the fact they print a document before I can leave.

Workflow

Another one of the significant influencers I find is that users typically do not understand the workflows associated with the MFD and how it can benefit them:

• Access to finishing options from the print driver
• Ability to identify and print to special media such as letterhead
• Secure printing workflows
• Print and hold workflows

These discussions often result in a “ah ha” moment when they realize they can actually take advantage of the speed and functions of the MFD from the print driver and maintain control of their jobs.

Training

This last issue, lack of training is the single most significant contributor to resistance to change behaviors and obviously influences the three other issues discussed above. It is interesting that in a group interview the issue rarely presents itself; few of us want to admit we do not understand something. However, if you listen and observe carefully, and ask the question in the correct manner someone will usually identify lack of training in a second or third party inference.

When approached individually and confidentially you will have the opportunity to walk the resistant user through the process and again experience the “ah ha” moment as they discover how it actually benefits them.

Now it is quite obvious that none of this is rocket science but these issues commonly derail attempts to redefine your document output strategy. Addressing them should be part of your implementation strategy and performed by your internal resources or contracted vendor.

Admittedly, fixing these issues may not still give you all the results you were hoping for, but will contribute. For those of you thinking, "some users just do not want to change," further modification of user behaviors can be accomplished with one of the software packages designed for that purpose. An additional benefit of these tools is they also provide you the measurements from which you can manage individual users and your entire document output environment.

How Do You Rationalize Your Desktop Printers?

Do you, or does your organization have a strategy for desktop printers? If you are like most of the managers I speak to the answer is no. When they do it is typically that desktop printers are not allowed at all or the exact opposite; anything goes! I am not sure either of these are real strategies.

My experiences have revealed very few fleet management providers address the entire desktop fleet and usually ignore the impact of their expense in assessments. If you notice I specifically said fleet management because I believe a broader managed print services engagement includes all of the devices by default.

I think desktop printers are often ignored for the following reasons:

• Their impact on costs is underestimated
  
• They add to the complexity of the project
  
• No one wants to address the associated political issues
  

Impact on Your Document Output Environment

If you believe your desktop printers will not have a significant impact on your expenses you may want to think again. If I look back over some recent clients' environments it is not at all unusual for the inkjet devices alone to look something like this:

• Inkjet devices ranged from 3 to 33% of the overall device population
  
• Inkjet produced pages ranged from 2 to 11% of the total pages
  
• Inkjet driven expenses ranged from 6 to 43% of the total expense
  
• Savings from an effective inkjet strategy ranged from 8 to 65% of the total savings
  

The actual averages would be in the upper half of these ranges, there were a couple of environments included where a first pass at removing desktop printers had already been completed. The message within the data is that most clients are quite surprised by the actual impact of their desktop, and specifically inkjet devices.

Complexity

Adding locally connected desktop printers to a well designed MPS project does not increase the work and complexity beyond the potential benefits. It is understandable why a fleet management provider who is not likely to increase their revenues as a result of this effort would not want to include them. However, you as the client or end-user should be concerned with a component of your document output environment with as much potential impact as the desktop devices may actually have. The actual savings from a good desktop strategy for some of the clients included in the numbers above ran into thousands of dollars per month.

Political Issues

When you conduct a physical survey inside an enterprise you hear every reason why someone needs (deserves) a personal desktop printer. I have had the pleasure of $450 per hour professionals sit me down and present their 30 minute justification.

Security is an issue that no one believes can, or will be challenged but it can be:

• Network printers and multifunction devices have very good secure print functions
  
• How secure is printing a document on a slow desktop printer to leave it sit in the output tray or on the desktop?
  
• Security is in the workflow and not the device
  

Having a personal printer saves time and therefore expense (soft costs):

• What was the cost difference between printing the job on the desktop versus the workgroup device?
  
• How much time was saved and what was the value of the time?
  
• Was printing the job on the desktop device a good investment?
  
• Are you really that busy 8 hours per day?
  

Printing to a workgroup device disrupts my workflow:

• An interesting statistic inside of my data is that a high percentage of users print less than one job per day to a local device?
  

Printing photographs requires a desktop color printer:

• If the photographic printing is that important you should be using color management and printing on a photo grade paper
  
• The above is rarely evidenced by the pages I see sitting on the printer and desktop
  

Let me make it clear that I am not one who believes that every desktop printer should be "yanked" out of an organization but am convinced that there should be a strategy for their deployment within a well managed document output environment. This discussion can provide an outline for such a strategy but obviously will need greater detail based on your unique environment, cost structure and corporate (institution) philosophy.

Does your RFP Reflect your MPS Objectives?

Are you the person inside your organization who is preparing an RFP or bid for Managed Print Services?

If you are, join me for a few minutes while I share some thoughts and observations based on a sampling of RFPs I have recently reviewed from both private and public enterprises. Typically, these documents did not define a course of action or set of services that would fulfill the stated objective of the RFP and resulting project!

Stated Objectives

Below I have summarized the objectives stated by most of the RFPs:

• Improved user access to resources


• Enhanced support for users


• More productive workflows


• Rationalization (right sizing) of asset base


• Better return on investment in assets


• Lower overall expenses associated with document output


• Enhanced management processes and controls


• Reduced demand on internal resources

In some instances document management, sustainability and compliancy were mentioned or stated as future or secondary goals.

Does this represent what you expect from a re-engineered and better managed document output environment?

Course of Action

Of interest to me was that most of the RFPs stated a fairly robust set of objectives as summarized above but did not lay out a course of action or process that would likely deliver more than half of them.

Typically they requested assessment processes to uncover little more than device locations and meter readings; ostensibly to be used for strategy development. This type of limited data largely represents another replacement strategy and will probably not deliver solutions beyond simple fleet management. To maximize your document output environment a robust and comprehensive assessment is needed to provide the depth of understanding required for development of a strategy.

Most either implied or actually stated their focus was on network printers or copiers (multifunction devices); sometimes stating this was a first step in a larger endeavor. While I completely understand the desire to break a project down into manageable pieces and for immediate realization of savings, these pieces should not be completed without consideration of the document output environment as a whole. After all, this departmentalization and segmentation is what created the problem we are all trying to solve.

I suggest you should consider the document output environment holistically, create an overarching strategy and then break the implementation down into manageable pieces if you feel you cannot manage a broader project at once. If not, you will more than likely be developing strategies, solutions and vendor relationships based on components without the necessary interdependencies to achieve all of your objectives; again, back to the cause of the problem.

An alternative is an all-inclusive analysis of the document output environment, development of a comprehensive strategy and implementation plan for short-, mid- and long-term improvements. There will always be fairly immediate actions which can begin the expense reductions desired without compromising the larger objectives. Similar to software development, vendor contracts should be developed as components with windows that allow them to effectively interact with and support future or expanded strategy components.

Services

As would be expected, the services defined by virtually all of the RFPs were limited along the lines of the course of actions. The assessment and strategy processes were limited to network printers or multifunction devices with other important components of a document output environment as little more than secondary thoughts. Mapping locations of devices usually had greater import than understanding user behaviors and workflow.

Defined services were largely confined to supply replenishment and fix/repair services. There were often requirements for volume tracking and reporting but almost always without a stated purpose for this data and definition of the reporting. Usage statistics other than chargeback situations are very important data but only if used in a manner to and purpose of improving the document output environment. Data limited to page volumes and costs provide limited value for re-engineering and improving the document output environment. These are all remnants of technology refreshment based on replacement versus strategy.

Often device rationalization was mentioned as an organic result of the services outlined above rather than with the appropriate level of definition and focus. Comprehensive technology and device rationalization will deliver the greatest possible expense reductions and workflow improvements and should be defined in much greater detail. A limited amount of in-field observation has led me to conclude that this is one of the promises of management print services that rarely get attention after the supply replenishment and fix/repair service are in place and revenues are being realized by vendors. This is a predictable occurrence since most vendors use MPS as a marketing strategy to capture hardware, supply and service revenues with limited in-place processes for the management component.

My suggestion is that you define the management processes with as much detail and level of interest that you apply to the supply replenishment and fix/repair services. The RFPs I read usually ask an inordinate number of questions about attitudes, processes and capabilities to furnish supplies and fix/repair service and virtually none for the strategy development or management component. You should be asking for rationalization of technology and not simply devices.

Summary

After reviewing RFPs and following up with project managers I realize that this is virgin territory for most of you with few good resources to draw on. It is often obvious these documents have been influenced by vendors' sales and marketing efforts and/or the limited view of MPS within the majority of industry participants.

What does this all mean to you? If you answered yes to the question I asked earlier about your objectives it means the difference between achieving none of them, a few of them, most of them or all of them. I am confident that several of the organizations will miss savings of hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars if they accept proposals that are limited to the course of action and services defined in their RFP.

I advise you to step back and think carefully about your larger goals and objectives and independently research managing your document output environment with less influence by service providers, hardware and supply manufacturers and software developers. There are a number of resources available that bring an independent, end-user view to this market space.

If this post caught your interest and makes some sense to you I would suggest you read several of my earlier postings as well:

Managed Print Services, Blind Men & Elephants
Print Management Versus Device Management
Improving Your Document Output Environment

Improving Your Document Output Environment

Are you the one who has been tasked with improving your organizations document output environment – where will you begin?

Taking the common path will mean following the recommendations of most of the vendors you will encounter and focus on reducing the operating costs of your network printer fleet. You may even contract with one of them to "manage" it under an MPS or fleet management umbrella.

Obviously, the network printer fleet is a major component of your document output environment but only that, a component. If you do not consider other elements such as user behaviors and workflow, or try to address the network printer fleet in isolation from the rest of the environment you are missing the greatest opportunity to maximize your environment.

It is my belief that it is just as important to understand how and where the documents originate as it is to know where they are output. Analysis of the data I find in my document environment assessments invariably allows me to identify expense reductions as high as 35% without ever addressing operating costs. Without this knowledge how can one truly maximize both the fleet and user productivity?

Three simple examples to illustrate this point:

In a recent assessment I discovered that the client was printing approximately 36,000 color pages per month from e-mail. At a contracted cost of $0.075 per page they were wasting a minimum of $2,700 per month on this unnecessary activity.

In another project the client's equipment supplier recommended they upgrade a color-enabled MFD due to increased volume. Analysis of the data showed that just over 40% of the volume was coming from another workgroup who had an MFD that did not meet their needs. Replacing the device with too much volume would not have solved the core problem.

It is not unusual to discover that a percentage of users print 100% of their documents in color without any application-based requirements to do so. Additionally they often do this on desktop printers with a cost per page averaging 20 cents.

When performing assessments many vendors map the client's devices, some even map the volumes produced by those devices but mapping the volumes by user really provides a view of how the document output assets should be placed to best meet their needs.

More often than not I encounter prospects and RFPs that are only addressing the network printer fleet without consideration of the desktop printers, facsimile machines and MFDs. It is only with a balanced deployment of all these classes of devices that you can maximize your environment. Detailed data that shows job characteristics such as size by pages allows you to develop an effective least cost printing strategy.

The point of this post is if you are setting out to re-engineer your print output environment do not shortchange yourself by limiting the scope of the project. Assessing and analyzing all components will provide you with the knowledge of their interdependencies and ultimately allow you to maximize each one individually. Stay in touch for more detailed discussions of these topics.

Are You Still Thinking About Managed Print Services?

Managed print services should no longer be ignored or merely contemplated by either the provider community or end-user client. MPS can resolve the issues resulting from the convergence between component-based copiers and cartridge-based printers and continued use of early print workflows by the end-user community.

MPS will deliver expense reductions, improve technology ROI and increase employee productivity for end-user clients who have seen an explosion of cartridge-based assets and associated pages.

MFD dealers who experienced erosion of page volumes can recapture lost revenues or traditional printer dealers can protect or increase their share of the clients document output spend.

Change

In order to cross the chasm most of the interested parties will need to rethink their strategies.

End-user clients can benefit from transitioning to a truly digital document output environment versus simply employing digitally-based technology in a predominantly analog workflow. Virtually all available output technology enables advanced digital production workflows, management and modification of user behaviors, high level proactive support and effective business processes to measure and manage their environments.

Service providers from both sides of the technology spectrum will need to rethink their objectives from simply selling more hardware, supplies and fix/repair services to assisting their clients design, implement and manage a digital document output environment. Most will need to change their approaches from selling hardware, supplies and service to being a services provider much the same way as IT related organizations did a decade ago.

Opportunity

Implementation of managed print services provides the greatest savings for the end-user client; these high value services deliver the highest margin potential for the service provider: both parties win.

All of the managed print services components—assessment services, strategic planning, fleet management, technical support, hardware placement, workflow design and strategic management services provide revenue opportunities for the provider.

The good news is that you probably have many of the resources in place required to enter managed print services and only need to understand it better. If not, you can find partners that will participate with you in building your MPS strategy. Armed with this knowledge and a good assessment of your objectives, expectations and resources you can plan a successful MPS strategy.

Next Step

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What is MPS?
• What are my reasons for getting into it?
• What are my expectations and how will I measure success?
• What commitments am I willing to make to succeed?

Additionally, service providers should consider:

• Are my clients requesting this service?
• Am I meeting competitive pressures?
• Am I looking for new revenue opportunities or am I simply trying to sell more hardware, supplies and fix/repair services.

Once you have answered these questions, you can determine what commitments it will take and what returns they will render.