I have always had this burning question in the back of mind, “Why do we Print?” Aren’t we supposed be working in Paperless offices by now?
We all imagine offices of the future to be a place of efficiency, sustainability, a collaborative setting where computers support our daily print routines and processes. But in reality, being human, your environment or what you are exposed to, quickly determines your print behaviour.
Why do we spend hours of time meticulously preparing a perfect report for clients? Because this is a beneficial tool and your client will be able to see their results through regular reporting.
Monthly reporting is a good time to see where you are, versus where you intend to be. When a client gets to look at what they’ve accomplished last month, they get a clearer picture of whether they’re reaching their business goals.
Efficiency, the buzzword in any company is all about working smart, not hard. Making the most of your time and effort, whilst staying productive.
Most people are looking for ways to become more efficient in their everyday tasks. Earlier, all you needed was a basic computer, telephone and perhaps a fax machine to get through the items on your to-do list. Whereas now, this won’t give you the edge to make you more efficient and thus, you won’t be one step ahead of your competition.
The term Workflow is often an unknown in any organisation, big or small. Why is it an unknown? Or should we be asking ourselves, why aren’t organisations challenging this unknown?
What is a workflow and how should it run you may ask? A Workflow is there to Optimise Business Processes. Optimisation will inherently increase productivity, while adhering to your organisation’s document control policies and security. The ultimate goal should be to make your organisation efficient and sustainable by transforming traditional printed documents into digital form, using a workflow and document management software.
Well, it may “already be happening in my business” you may say and yes, it probably is, but in many forms, either manually, physically or digitally. The key question to ask is how effective, flexible and agile is your workflow on your everyday business tasks?
Being in a company that specialises in Managed Print Services (MPS) means that I spend a lot of time speaking to Customer and potential Customer IT Managers, Financial Managers and Facilities Managers about their office automation environments. Not the most exciting topic, I agree, but one of those that needs to be discussed for a business to run smoothly (have you ever seen what happens to an employee when their printer does not work? It’s usually not a pretty sight and has been the punchline of many entertaining television commercials).
No single conversation is ever the same but there is one recurring theme that comes up time and again, that is when the question arises, “…so Mr/Mrs Customer, do you want to have a Managed Print Service or an Office Automation Solution?” The response I get without fail is, “but we already have a Managed Print Service”. The unfortunate reality is that although most vendors sell their solutions as MPS solutions, they are in-fact not MPS solutions, but the customer is none the wiser.
So, I thought it would be helpful to Customers to have some guideline metrics to check just how much of an MPS service they do have in place. We have therefor put together a set of questions (MPS Scorecard) that should help achieve this, I hope you find it useful.
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