Johannesburg, 18 Oct 2013
The European managed print services (MPS) market is expected to grow from EUR7.6 billion in 2009 to EUR21.9 billion by 2014, according to a market forecast from Photizo Group. Running parallel to this growth, MPS is evolving. Nowadays, MPS has the power to transform an organisation and deliver increased value through business solutions. However, many businesses still only know the concept in its foundational stage.
MPS has historically been known for improving visibility and control of an organisation's print fleet, while driving down print output costs and relieving the IT admin support workload. This directly impacts the bottom line through cost savings. However, MPS has matured and now offers so much more to businesses looking to improve efficiencies at the core of their organisation, says Mark Hiller, Country General Manager at Lexmark South Africa.
The first foundational stage of MPS focuses on getting the fundamentals in place to meet office printing needs. This entails getting the right mix and placement of hardware devices across an organisation, day-to-day control and monitoring of the print fleet, reducing print volume and proactive consumables management.
But, the explosion in digital data is forcing organisations to review their approach to enterprise information and how to manage it as part of their wider document management strategies.
It is this that is driving the evolution of MPS so that it no longer simply focuses on the fundamentals of print output and fleet management. Now, it is increasingly about instilling best practice and improving business processes to integrate paper and digital workflows within an organisation.
Summarising the current global enterprise MPS market in a recent report, Quocirca described it as "evolving from the core services of device consolidation and optimisation to one that favours long-term business improvement". It highlights that key purchase decision drivers are achieving incremental cost savings and gaining productivity improvements, with the ability to deal with the digitisation of paper workflows being a key differentiator.
Increasingly, companies signing up to managed print services are assessing how information - both paper and digital - is currently managed and processed, and how it could be handled more efficiently to bring increased business value. Documents contain essential corporate information, which allows a business to operate effectively and achieve better results. Therefore, the sharing and ease of information access is critical to growth and success and should not be bound by infrastructure. This best practice approach to document management can have a significant impact on controlling access to important company data and ensuring most value is gained from it.
MPS can also play a key role in the optimisation of the entire document life cycle. It is vital that documents, whatever their format, can be captured at the point of entry to the organisation and integrated directly into business processes and workflow systems to ensure information is available whenever, and wherever, it's needed across the business.
It is this approach which is delivering the true business value of managed print services, accelerating the return on investment that can be achieved. MPS thereby increases the speed at which information is captured, processed and made available across organisational systems, and automates internal business processes.
With a full understanding of the benefits that MPS nowadays brings, it is clear that businesses can efficiently and effectively deal with growing corporate data volumes, optimise processes across document input and output, and create efficient workflows across an entire organisation.
Share