Nowadays, many businesses have chosen to implement managed print services as it allows them to considerably reduce the cost of printing.

That is because the maintenance of the machines, as well as all the costs of consumables, are all taken care of as part as one single package.
The implementation of an managed print service such as ASL will also mean the IT team will spend less time maintaining the printers and more time concentrating on tasks that will make a significant difference to the business. However, in order for the transition to an managed print service to be successful, you will need to put a strategy in place so that it causes the least disruption possible to your business.

Evaluate

The most important thing is to, first of all, evaluate what your business needs, when it comes to managed print service, there isn’t a one size fits all solution. You will want to know how often you print, how much ink you need and how long on average your IT team spend maintaining the printers and copiers. Whilst ASL can assist you in the process, it is probably best for you to confer with your IT team so you have a real idea of your needs. They will be able to tell you how often the ink or toner has to be changed and how often they have to carry out any other maintenance. Based on that information, you will then know what kind of managed print service your business needs. Then after that assessment, ASL will decide to either redeploy your current equipment if it is deemed adequate or to retire it if we think that is obsolete and no longer suit your needs. However, it is not only about how often you use your printing equipment, it is the whole of the printing processes which need analysing.

In order to understand your printing processes, we will need to know how often you need the printer but also which departments are printing the most as well as which programs are generating the most print requests. This information will determine the quality of print that is used, for example, if the design department is the one that prints the most, then it is highly likely they will print in high definition or that it will need its own printer so that it doesn’t disrupt the workflow of the other departments within the business. Additionally, we will also need to know how often documents are copied or scanned; this will help us determine whether you need a multifunction machine or not. Those needs can also go beyond the print production of documents, some of the devices we supply also have an integrated stapler which means it is possible to print and present documents in a professional way. In-fact when undertaking the deployment of Managed Print Services, it is just as important to understand the print processes as it is the to understand the type of machine you will need.

Understanding

So that we can deploy your managed print service efficiently, ASL will also need to know more about your business, and while it is primarily office based businesses which need printing solutions, there are managed print services for all types of businesses. We will need to know the size of the business, it might sound obvious, but the bigger the business, the more printing devices will be needed. Then we need to know the print requirements of each department in the business; the mail-room, for example, won’t have the same requirements as the sales office. That will help us understand which sort of printer and how many printers are needed within the building. However, the most important part of this process is to get an idea of how your IT infrastructure works; in other words, do you manage IT internally or do you get an external company to manage your IT systems. We will then communicate with them to ensure everything is running smoothly and to set up the maintenance alerts so that we can prevent any mishaps from occurring and save you valuable time.

Final Stages

Once, the machines have been installed, you will have to train staff to learn the print management software.
This is the final stage of any managed print service deployment but the most important one, they will need to know how to send a document to print and how to copy so that print productivity is maintained.

In order for the deployment of an manged print service to be rolled-out successfully, we, therefore, require a variety of information so that we can spec out the best solution for your business in order to help you optimise productivity. If you work with your managed print service provider and communicate with them on a regular basis, they will be on-hand to help you when the business expands so that those processes can also run smoothly. Communication is also key to the successful deployment of the managed print service solution because we will to liaise with you on a regular basis to ensure the system is working for you.