There is no question that gaining control over an enterprise’s print environment can yield significant savings. IDC research has found that an organization with 1,000 knowledge workers may lose up to $6 million annually if it fails to adequately manage its information. And in addition to time that is wasted searching for documents and data, IDC points out there is also the hidden cost of poorly-based decisions when critical information is not available.
While managed print services (MPS) projects hold the promise of improving an organization’s bottom-line by avoiding such costly inefficiencies, not all end up realizing the benefits projected when the engagement began. Ensuring success starts as all good business decisions do – with choosing the right partner.
Here are four things to be considered to ensure that your MPS provider delivers success:
- The ability to provide a sound assessment. Make sure your organization works with an MPS provider that will at the very outset conduct a complete assessment of the organization. If your organization’s footprint is too large for every part of it to be assessed, it is essential that the provider base the assessment on a sample that is representative of the organization as a whole. And the analysis shouldn’t just focus on hardcopy devices, break-fix costs and supplies. It should also give you a complete picture of your document workflows, imaging and archiving processes, and sustainability issues.
- Ask how the provider will implement change. A common pitfall is the lack of employee compliance with the changes proposed by the MPS provider. The number one reason that technology initiatives fail is end-user resistance or lack of understanding. Even though management has signed-off on proposed changes to procedures and processes, that does not mean that employees will actually follow the recommendations.The MPS provider needs to have a proven methodology for ensuring that the proposed changes are implemented. Be sure to ask your potential MPS provider about the change management techniques they will use to inform employees about the purpose and benefits of the proposed changes and motivate them to implement and comply with the recommended changes to work flow and processes.
- Set out your organization’s expectations in service-level agreements. It is also a good practice for the company to require that the MPS provider agree to a number of service-level agreements (SLAs) concerning the provider’s key deliverables and deadlines. Regular reporting on compliance with the SLAs will keep the company informed of the progress of the MPS engagement and of any issues that need to be addressed or resolved.
- Choose a provider with the experience and solutions to meet evolving needs. Finally, the enterprise should look beyond its needs today. Choose an MPS provider that has the proven technology and expertise to address the organization’s evolving needs with innovative IT and document processing solutions. Doing so will help your organization keep pace with important evolving trends; including the cloud, a growing mobile workforce, remote management, hard-copy and paper-based document security, regulatory compliance, digital document management and sustainability.
Addressing these four areas with your prospective MPS provider up-front will go a long way toward making sure the relationship develops into a true partnership and delivers the cost-efficiencies, lasting process improvements, and sustainability benefits that define success.
Source: http://mdsblog.ricoh-usa.com
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