The global economic outlook being choppy as it is, a majority of businesses have strategically decided to shift their investments from a capital expenditure model (capex) to the operational expenditure (opex) one. This shift is more pronounced in areas like information technology and is partly responsible for the ever-growing relevance and interest of businesses in cloud computing. Owned versus rented infrastructure is a keen discussed and debated topic in corporate boardrooms today.
At the same time, businesses are spending ever-growing amount of resources on document and content management. They are printing more documents than ever. Gartner had estimated in 2003 that businesses would spend between 1-3% of their annual revenues on their document output equipment fleets. For large enterprises, expenditure involved in printing and copying documents can therefore run into crores.
In managed print services (MPS), there exists a model that allows business organisations to achieve the dual objectives of shifting their imaging and printing fleet infrastructure to an opex model, and at the same time reduce their document output costs. MPS also allows organisations to integrate imaging and printing into their overall IT infrastructure strategies (particularly in the case of cloud adoption).
No wonder then we see a growing momentum towards MPS. Gartner predicts that MPS is accelerating growth to the point that more than 50% of large organisations worldwide will employ MPS by 2015. The research firm further says that this significant and projected growth is evidence that organisations must consider implementing MPS to reduce capital and supplies cost as well as improve document workflows.
Gartner also says that the MPS market is growing rapidly. A study by research firm Photizo Group found that Asia Pacific is the fastest growing MPS region, containing six of the top ten fastest growth countries worldwide, led by India. According to InfoTrends projections, the managed print services revenue opportunity on a global basis is expected to grow from $12.3 billion in 2009 to $25.5 billion in 2014. All regions will demonstrate double-digit increases with Asia Pacific showing the strongest potential with an 18% compound annual growth rate, with India at the forefront.
These strong growth projections are not without a reason. MPS has a strong relevance particularly in the Indian business environment where majority of large organisations don?t have ready means to calculate how much do they spend on imaging and printing. Hard costs like purchase of printers and supplies are somewhat easy to calculate, but the soft costs like ongoing management, end-user support and efficiencies, lifecycle management, and workflow improvements are overlooked. In a typical enterprise printing environment, industry experts estimate that forevery dollar spent on hard costs, another $9 is spent managing the printed documents over their lifecycles. Clearly majority of imaging and printing costs are in end-user time and the flow of documents, and MPS is a powerful tool to manage and reduce these costs.
Another advantage of adopting MPS is a direct reduction in environmental impact. Businesses are today increasingly sensitive to reducing their energy consumption with the twin objectives of saving costs and reducing the environmental impact. Let us consider the scope of this impact ?a Forrester study in 2010 said that distributed IT assets, such as PCs, monitors, printers and telephones, consume 55% of IT?s total energy footprint. From the study?s universe, nearly 70% of organisations have consolidated their printing environments, reducing energy consumption by 50% while eliminating e-waste by lessening demand for new hardware.
MPS delivers value by working directly at optimising the imaging and printing infrastructure?placing the right number of printers exactly where they are needed, managing the environment by adjusting printer settings to reduce energy and paper use, ordering the right amount of supplies automatically, and even improving workflows by making imaging and printing more secure, as well as digitising paper-based processes and linking them to key business applications.
Managed well, an organisation?s imaging and printing infrastructure can yield substantial cost savings and productivity gains. And it pays to let the experts manage the imaging and printing infrastructure?organisations can achieve as much as 30% savings in printing and imaging costs by adopting MPS.
The typical gamut of managed print services runs from assessment, financial and procurement services to transition and implementation services, management and support services, and document and workflow services. Whether chosen separately or combined, these services help businesses optimise their infrastructure, manage business efficiency and security and streamline document-intensive workflows. Finally, it all adds up in a net positive impact on the organisation?s bottom line, which is all that matters in today?s economic scenario.
The writer is director, printing systems, printers and personal systems division, HP India
