Managed Print Services and Optimization: You Can Do It Too

I just finished a grueling 2½-day process of reviewing vendor responses to a multi-function device RFP for a large university in New York City. The organization wanted to upgrade and modernize its fleet of copiers/multifunction devices and move to a cost-per-copy program. My task was to evaluate the current state, make recommendations on ways to optimize resource use, write the RFP, and help with the evaluation. Pretty straightforward stuff.

The toughest part of this type of project is helping the organization assess its current state. You’d be surprised at how little many organizations know about their copier, MFD and desktop printer fleets. Or maybe not. Suffice it to say that organizations that know how many devices they have, where they are, and the number of prints/copies they make have most of the data needed to optimize the fleet.

It follows that organizations that don’t have the aforementioned data fall prey to the circling managed print services proponents looking to optimize the fleet.

You see, a few years ago a major IT consulting firm opined that organizations spend 1 to 3 percent of their gross revenue on printing. It did not define “printing”—that is, it did not clarify whether printing included offset, toner-based production print, print created on distributed copier/MFDs, laser and ink-jet desktop printers, data center production, etc. Nor did it articulate the basis of the implication that 1 to 3 percent was a bad thing. For all we know, 1 to 3 percent is about right.

Nevertheless, the pundits spoke it and the copier companies jumped on board, so now our organizations are being inundated with promises of huge savings available from taming the copier/printer beast. Many managed print services (MPS) firms promise savings of 30 percent by reducing the number of printers, copiers and fax machines and purchasing competitively. Never mind that these are often the same companies that sold us the printers, copiers and fax machines in the first place, and if they didn’t sell them to us, they probably tried to.

It’s easy to see how this might turn some heads. If you work for an organization with annual sales of $100 million, the MPS folks are promising annual savings of up to $900,000. That’s not chump change. It’s not entirely accurate either.

So back to the issue at hand—the fleet proposals. Even though the RFP provided a detailed list of the location, age and average monthly volume of every device being replaced, each one of the proposals included a description of how the vendor would help us right-size our fleet. Excuse me, but I think we’ve done that.

So what does this have to do with in-plant managers? Several things.

First, the MPS folks aren’t pedaling anything you don’t already know. This isn’t rocket science, and chances are you have the KSAs (knowledge, skills, and abilities) to analyze the current situation and make recommendations on ways to optimize the fleet. The problem is, your expertise may not be recognized, and that’s where you need to be proactive. The proposal to perform a fleet analysis and recommend real savings could just as well come from you as from a vendor, but you have to let people know you can do it.

Second, you need to position yourself, if at all possible, to be in the loop to evaluate MPS proposals when they come in—and they will. The proposals will be full of great sounding but ambiguous terms, like “optimization,” “fleet management,” “total cost of ownership,” “device proliferation,” “underutilization” and “lost productivity.” They will contain multiple terms followed by “solution,” as in “device solution,” "productivity solution” and my favorite “document management and workflow solutions.” I’ve often wondered how one can come up with a solution when the problem has not been identified, but that’s another story. And you, the in-plant manager, may be the only one in the organization positioned to challenge the meaning of these terms.

Your organization doesn’t need an outsider to “optimize” its fleet. It has you.