Since the economic downturn began, one of the biggest challenges for business owners has been the sheer uncertainty of the economy. When business slows and the future is tentative, tough decisions undoubtedly arise.
One of the most heart-wrenching and stressful challenges business owners and managers face is finding ways to reduce costs without cutting jobs. One of the newest and most innovative ways in which companies can reduce expenses and save jobs is through managed print services (MPS).
“This is a completely new service that didn’t exist eight years ago,” says Sonny Kumar, the vice president and general manager of Toshiba Business Solutions. “Now it is one of the most highly demanded office technology/administration services requested of vendors due to the economic climate, not only here in the U.S. but worldwide.”
Smart Business spoke to Kumar about MPS and how your business can benefit from it.
What is MPS?
Toshiba developed the first MPS program more than seven years ago, called Encompass 1.0. It was created with the intention of being more than just another sales tool for dealers. It was designed for the purpose of providing a solution to meet customers’ needs for process improvement and reduced expenses. At the time, this business model was a new idea, not immediately replicated by other manufacturers, and not quickly adopted by the dealers selling office technology devices.
But then the economy fell apart. As a result, those manufacturers and dealers who had not previously adopted an MPS strategy were now open to the idea as demand from customers skyrocketed. Within a few short years, MPS became the hottest buzz word in the office technology industry, and there is not a copier manufacturer in existence today that doesn’t claim to have an MPS program of some kind.
Because many of the programs are still in the early stages of development and implementation, there continues to be some debate when it comes to the definition of MPS. Essentially, MPS is managing a customer’s existing fleet of imaging devices regardless of brand. In other words, it doesn’t matter what brand of devices you have. If they work for you and are valuable in an optimized fleet, a good MPS provider will service and support them. The MPS provider is not focused on removing your machines and replacing them with its own brand in order to create greater profits. Unless it’s the right thing to do for the you, of course. Not all manufacturers take this brand-agnostic approach though, so businesses really need to do their homework and find the vendor that works best for them.
