Why should CIOs care about the issue of managed print services and how much of a priority is it currently among Asia’s IT executives?
A key priority for today’s CIO is ensuring a sustainable business model through investments in technologies that enable cost and operational efficiency within an organisation. While there are many opportunities to cut operational costs in different departments of an organisation, what many CIOs do not realise is the fact that if not monitored, printing costs can result in revenue leaks that often go unnoticed. In fact, market research has shown that some enterprises spend up to 1-3 per cent of their total cost on document output. From our conversations with customers, some of whom have experienced up to 30 per cent in savings from proper monitoring and management of print services, managed print services(MPS) is now on the radar of CIOs and IT managers who are looking to minimise operating costs. They are exploring the use of effective technologies as part of overarching technology adoption to maintain a profitable business model.

What are the major drivers for print revenue leaks for companies in the Asia Pacific?

For the print revenue leaks there are many avenues that often go unnoticed in an organisation. There could be boulevards like use of multiple print devices from different vendors being scattered over various locations that can result in multiple payments to various vendors; the lack of proper management and monitoring of print use.

There could be other fallbacks like high percentage of non-networked printers which can even result to additional costs of paper usage. An area where operational costs can further be reduced is High costs and underused equipment, whereas per industry norms, technical support costs within the industry make up approximately one third of IT and helpdesk costs.

What is the key industry influences pointing to more use of the MPS strategy?

MPS became more important after the US meltdown in the year 2009; because all CIOs were asked to optimise the resources which come under all printing devices and IT peripherals. At times many prints are not collected after giving print command and all this leads to

1. Paper wastage
2. Print Cost
3. Electricity

A key industry influence that is driving the interest around MPS is the fact that organisations are realising the effectiveness of print infrastructure management. As the need for management and streamlining of Document Flow in organisation becomes a necessity, MPS offers a host of solutions like e-copy pdf pro, therefore through intelligent printing devices that allow companies to create, modify, transfer documents and collaborate in a more cost -effective manner. This has accelerated the uptake of MPS as a result of the managed print services’ utility-based model.

Another key driver is the increasing awareness among organisations to move beyond rudimentary print solutions and focus on data management and protection; as issues like the security of information within an organisation become a pertinent issue.

How does Green IT sit with the issue of MPS and what sort of environmental savings is possible using this approach?

As part of our role is to help companies print less and save more, Canon believes that long term benefits can be obtained through Green IT. For an organisation, Green IT has become a meaningful issue that no longer can be dismissed as a trend. There are many opportunities for companies to achieve continued savings in a sustainable manner by being environmentally friendly. Canon deploys a range of proprietary energy-saving technologies which efficiently manages the operation of the product. The energy-conserving architecture of the MFDs helps in consuming less energy and cutting CO2 emission. The RAPID Fusing and IH Fusing technology provide exceptional image quality in less warm-up time cutting energy consumption by 70%. With the penetration of environment friendly technologies like Duplex print technology, Nature Stone and AIRSHELL packaging material Canon is providing profitable, secure and control print fleet. Canon’s e-waste management program which is termed as Take- Back Program is to control and strongly spearhead e-waste that forms the daily part and parcel of life.

What sorts of strategies are available for CIOs to address print cost problems and how easy/costly are they to implement?

CIOs have long been focusing on making IT a driver for growth, using strategies such as IT consolidation and simplification to create business value with limited spend. Despite the abundance of printed communications across businesses printing is an afterthought when it comes to controlling and managing IT costs. Today’s multifunction peripherals (MFPs) are sophisticated document processing hubs which can capture, print, copy and store with speed and convenience, their network connectivity and ability to store data on hard drives brings inherent security risks.
Canon helps reduce up to 30% cost through the use of MPS that can create business value by using existing resources more productively, allowing a business to focus on core competencies. MPS can also improve the predictability of expenditure on an Opex basis—while removing the hardware costs from the Capex budget.

Consolidation with cost reduction without compromising on the convenience and control is the key element in MPS.
Initially the cost of implementing MPS might appear as huge, but afterimplementation the ROI is within 1.5-2 years and thus many organisations save approximately 25-30% on their print cost.

MPS provides an assessment of the existing device fleet, analysing print usage and then determining a consolidation and on-going management strategy and implementing workflow solutions.

CIOs chart the top priorities as

Reducing costs: MPS can deliver high performance whilst helping to control costs and allow companies to benefit from an optimised print infrastructure with minimal (or often no) capital investment.

Reducing risk: Information security is high on the agenda for every CIO which can be easily mitigated by implementing solutions such as uniFLOW & eCOPY which ensure documents are only released on authentication, encrypting hard drives of MFPs and auditing usage of features such as scan to email, print or copy.

What makes the Asia Pacific region different when it comes to the issue of managed print services and how much is government compliance anexisting pressure on MPS?

Managed Print Services is in an intermediate stage in the Asia-Pacific region. In Europe & USA, the MPS model has been existent for many years. In the Asia Pacific region, the managed print services focus only on Document Workflow (Input/Output) and related areas (Hardware & Software) whereas in Europe & USA, MPS has gone beyond this and is providing end-to-end document related solutions to organisations. i.e., Mail Room Services, Customer Feedback services etc. MPS in Asia Pacific will gradually move into that stage and will provide value added services to customers. As such there are no Indian government compliances on Managed Print Services model; it is an organisation’s internal decision on streamlining their processes; however government initiatives in Green-IT are compelling more and more organisations to go for MPS models. Recent corporate frauds world-over have also compelled the government to tighten corporate governance and confidentiality of information in an organisation, which has become a major driver for the adoption of MPS.