Are Managed Print Services Viable In A Hybrid Workplace

By Raees Sallie, Product Manager

Managed print services (MPS) have long been the best approach to corporate printing by giving workers the print tools they need to succeed, no matter the size of the office. However, with remote and hybrid work changing entire business structures, providing print services appears to be a much more formidable task than ever before. Is it still possible to maintain high levels of productivity while providing remote workers with the print, scan, and fax services they need to get things done?

Covered in this article

Managed Print Services: Efficient Productivity
How the Hybrid Workplace Is Changing Print
MPS that Embrace Hybrid Workers
A Better Print Solution Partner

Managed Print Services: Efficient Productivity

The holistic managed print services approach views a business’s entire printing infrastructure as a system to be optimised through efficient strategies tailored to a specific business’s needs. Once an efficient strategy is implemented, print, fax, and scan technologies work together to enhance the productivity of every part of the business that relies on print.

Some of the big benefits of MPS are:

• Stronger Security: Documents often contain vital information that is at risk of being stolen. MPS enable access management, data encryption, and activity tracking to ensure all sensitive information is kept away from unauthorised eyes.
• More cost-savings: Printing often represents a significant cost of running an office. Managing print with one central strategy eliminates unnecessary wastage by consolidating hardware, reducing energy costs, and ultimately saving on ink and paper usage.
• Increased productivity: MPS integrates print functions with other parts of the business, allowing workers to quickly and easily use print tools to get things done. Monitoring and servicing are handled efficiently and consumables are replenished timeously to avoid outages.

How the Hybrid Workplace Is Changing Print

After the COVID-19 pandemic, the shift to remote and hybrid work has moved up a gear and everything in a business, including print, has needed to change with it. Now that the centralised office isn’t the norm anymore, it may seem that managed print services can’t be implemented properly.

Some challenges that hybrid work presents are equipment costs, printer maintenance, security, and optimisation. Employees who work from home need to print, but using their home printer will often result in high maintenance costs, expensive retail pricing for consumables, and a lack of accountability if not managed properly. Document security will be limited for unmanaged home printers, while promoting efficient printing will be much more difficult at home than at the office.

These challenges may seem insurmountable (and eerily similar to those involved with office print without MPS). However, with the right managed print services partner, you can make hybrid and remote work boost your business while easily overcoming the above challenges.

MPS that Embrace Hybrid Work

While it may present a challenge to a business to have all its employees scattered remotely or only have them come into the office on certain days, MPS are still the best way to manage print. Even in a centralised office without hybrid workers, a print solution that’s not managed properly will slowly deteriorate productivity and increase costs.

Here’s how good MPS solutions will help your hybrid business thrive:

• Off-network printing – uses workers’ secure connections to corporate networks to send and receive print jobs from anywhere to any networked printers.
• Centralised print management – allows IT managers to see all printers and computers connected to their networks and manage everything from one central point, even if workers are using printers at home.
• Simplified provisioning – provides each worker who really needs a printer at their remote workplace a standardised printer, removing the complexity and cost of using home printers.
• Remote monitoring – monitors off-site printers directly for misuse or wastage, enabling pre-emptive maintenance and bulk ordering of consumables to avoid unnecessary costs.
• Secure print job retrieval – controls who and what can access sensitive documents, ensuring confidentiality.

All these functions work to mesh remote, hybrid, and in-office workers together and keep them working at their best.

A Better Print Solution Partner

Of course, you need to partner with the right brand to help you on your print journey. The right partner has a wealth of experience in the industry and knows how to adapt quickly to changes such as hybrid work.

Tarsus Distribution has partnered with the best in the industry to bring cutting-edge Managed Print Services specifically catered to the South African business environment. Our partners include Lexmark, and HP who each have decades of experience in the print industry.

These brands offer MPS solutions covering interconnected print and scan ecosystems, predictive support to reduce downtime, cloud-native interfaces to eliminate unnecessary infrastructure, real-time monitoring from a single pane of glass, and water-tight document security.

Prepare your print services for any potential challenges with the right print partner. Get in touch today.