Are Managed Print Services the future?

This is the type of service that photocopier companies have been providing to business for years and that printer vendors and print specialists such as Imagetec have been offering to large enterprise in the last few years since multi-function lasers began to take precedence over copiers in the workplace.

But a considerable opportunity exists in the mid- and even small market not previously serviced by these print specialists or in-house vendor staff. According to IDC’s Ghai, the percentage of firms currently taking advantage of outsourced printer services in Australia is still very low. High enough to show there is some interest, but low enough to demonstrate a significant market potential.

“There is certainly a good level of interest,” said Ghai, who explained that two recent research papers; Australia Printing and Imaging Opportunities in Large Businesses and Australia Printing and Imaging Opportunities in Small and Medium Businesses, demonstrate the vast opportunity in the market.

IDC estimates that if you look at the Australian market overall, taking in small, medium and large businesses, there are currently about 20 percent partially or selectively outsourcing their printing requirements. Another 10 percent are fully outsourced. Ghai estimated that “leaves a relatively a large chunk” of organisations, maybe as high as 50 or 60 percent of all Australian companies who are likely to benefit from utilising Managed Print Services, but do not yet outsource any of their print services.

The market, he suggested, has not developed quite as fast as the printer vendors would have liked. With the largest organisations already targeted, signed and contracted for advanced print management, deals either direct with vendors or through the 20 percent of resellers who are ‘specialising’ in print, it has quickly come time to downscale the offering to expand the market.

Scaling this down to the mid- and small business market is not straightforward. There are significant barriers to entry for resellers as described earlier. Think about it, call centre, helpdesk and software management, software and a server for status monitoring, break-fix response to a customer’s premise with a service level agreement perhaps of only a few hours. In contrast the photocopier companies have the scale and infrastructure already in place to deliver this sort of service and a migration to laser printers has been relatively easy.

It is difficult to have a comprehensive on-call solution for smaller organisations that perhaps only have a handful of printers and certainly not enough to have somebody on site permanently. What’s needed for the mid- and small market is a tiered approach with the vendor and reseller sharing the responsibility and delivering their own unique part of the solution.

Before the IT channel gets involved it needs to review the type of programs on offer from the vendors out there and pick ones that both they and their customers are comfortable with.

The larger printer vendors started changing their strategy last year and now others are following suit, putting together packages that target smaller businesses. Marsh at Kyocera, for example, said her organisation is also looking at programs that can help resellers deliver Managed Print Services. “MPS clearly offers opportunities for growth to vendors and their channel partners who take the time to get it right up-front,” she said. “Those organisations that get in early and get it right will reap the most rewards.

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