Parallel, we like to do things differently – transparency and honesty are important to us. Some of our team have been in the managed print services industry for a long time and wanted to offer something to the market that bucked the trend from complicated contracts with incomplete data and reporting. Some contracts make it very hard for customers to understand where they are at or make changes where their business evolves into something different throughout the contract’s lifetime.

The team have put their heads together and thought of five questions that you should be able to answer about your current MPS supplier:-

Do I know my Account Manager, and are they regularly reviewing their service to me?

A well-managed print service provider will provide you with a dedicated point of contact. This role should have several functions – one is to offer a consultative approach to your contract to ensure your current levels are correct and inform you of any changes they recommend.

This account manager should be proactive and not reactive and regularly contact you about your contract.

This contact will also be invaluable if an issue arises. Whether with hardware/software or reporting, they should take ownership of any problems and quickly and effectively resolve them.

How flexible are my current MPS contracts?

Managed print service contracts are often anywhere from three to five years, and let’s face it, a lot can change in that time. Companies get bought and sold – they grow & shrink – in fact, some businesses can be unrecognisable after such a long period.

Therefore, any contracts in place must change, too – any service should be scalable, including going up and down.

Look at the pandemic – if you were two years into a five-year contract when that struck, then your printing requirements would have changed dramatically – you could have ended up paying a lot of money for printing that wasn’t required – or wasn’t required in the place where you had contracted it to be used.

A good MPS supplier should be flexible enough to adapt with you – ensure you understand how your provider will keep track of your changing requirements, modify its provision and how easy it is to add/remove devices to your contract.

What reporting/analytics do I receive?

If you require it as a business, then you should receive in-depth management information from your MPS supplier – this should clearly show you whether the contract is providing the ROI it was intended to and highlight any changes they recommend you make to the agreement work better for you.

A good MPS service provider should provide the information and analysis to explain what it means. If required, you should be able to delve into the data granularly and see print volumes and cost per department and individual.

Are they regularly meeting the SLAs of our agreement?

Service Level Agreement in Managed Print Services covers you if things go wrong. You should have clear SLAs around the response time to issues and the time to fix the problem.

It’s vital that you understand what the support involves – is there any remote monitoring and maintenance happening? What is your responsibility if something goes wrong?

Understanding that your contract provider has engineers in suitable locations, the ability to carry out remote fixes and the right expertise for the units in place can all significantly impact how much uptime you can expect from your MPS.

Uptime is another essential understanding – anything over 90% would be considered good for a contract. With developments in remote monitoring and updating, this number should be getting closer to 100% for the organisations on the best arrangements.

Does our current solution need to be updated? V’s the business requirements

As mentioned, when entering into a new contract, you can expect to stay with that provider for at least three years. If you’re coming to the end of a print agreement, consider whether to remain with your current supplier or look around at what else is out there.

It’s essential to carefully consider what the next few years in your business will look like – has your company started to embrace digitalisation? Are workers now using the office less? There may have been a considerable reduction in the workforce resulting in fewer units being needed.

Before you re-enter negotiations, make sure you know the direction you are heading in – any good MPS provider will help you to audit and be happy to talk through your options rather than just pushing you to sign on the dotted line again. Ask for areas where they see improvements could be made, which can lead to cost savings which are currently more important than ever.

So, whether you are just starting to consider whether an MPS is right for your business or you have held contracts already – it might just be time to start asking some of these questions to ensure that both your current agreement and supplier are suitable for you in the future.

At Parallel, we’ve helped many customers to review their existing contracts to see if they are right and suggest areas for improvement -If our team can offer advice and guidance on what is next for your printing requirements, please send us a message.