A woman using a Zebra industrial printer

The Changing Face Of Managed Print Services

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Front office Managed Print Services (MPS) has gone through somewhat of an evolution because of the increased adoption of hybrid working. But what about MPS in the rugged back-office space?

During the past 4 years we have seen substantial growth in online shopping putting warehouses and 3PLs under pressure to deliver. With meteoric growth like that, not being able to print labels, delivery notes etc would have dire consequences on productivity. Who wants to wait until work screeches to a halt when MPS can mitigate issues often overlooked by busy print users or IT teams? By handing over the management responsibilities to a third party, your print-related costs would be both revealed and reduced. We estimate that some 50% of businesses don’t know how much they’re spending collectively on thermal printing.

We often find that, when conducting printer audits as part of our MPS service, many organisations have an incomplete understanding of what devices they have and what they’re doing. In many instances – and I’m sure this is the same with hybrid workers – expensive to use, personal printers are being widely deployed, unmanaged and uncontrolled.

Top 7 Reasons to Move to Managed Print Services

Lower operating costs
Gain unmatched intelligence
Minimises IT Workload
Optimises printer performance
Enhances printer security
Identify device refresh needs
Visibility into supplies usage

MPS ensures someone is keeping tabs on your printer assets all the time. Monitoring and maintaining the devices as well as automatically ordering supplies. Whilst I’m on the topic of consumables, it’s worth reminding organisations that it pays to use genuine supplies. By putting price before quality, you expose yourself to major operational headaches like regular printhead failures and costly downtime, not to mention regulatory headaches like non-compliant labels. By using proprietary supplies, you are optimising performance of the printer itself. For instance, Zebra’s labels, tags, wristbands and ribbons are specifically engineered for its thermal devices, like the industrial ZT600 Series, desktop ZD600 Series or mobile ZQ600 Plus Series; it even offers innovative solutions, solving operational challenges like the need for dissolvable labels.

Retailers and logistics providers need to drive as much efficiency as possible in this leg of the journey and some will manage it by increasing capacity, by automating, by upgrading systems or by outsourcing. MPS not only helps reduce hardware, supplies and maintenance costs but it can benefit in other ways too.

As the front office MPS model shifted to accommodate hybrid working, so too does our back-office offering, supporting not just large warehouses but also the very many micro fulfilment centres springing up everywhere. Improving speed and efficiency throughout all of them will be key and MPS can certainly help on both scores.