Outsourcing has always been a practice about to have its day in Ireland. Over the last number of years, everyone from service providers to analysts and technology vendors has predicted a sudden swing toward the practice among Irish organisations. It never really happened. While there have been many organisations here that have embraced outsourcing and have enjoyed the benefits, the mass adoption oft predicted remains just that, a prediction.
The Irish approach seems much more akin to a softly-softly approach, where out-tasking is more acceptable. One such task that seems to lend itself to this is printing and imaging. However, when ComputerScope, in association with Bryan S Ryan, surveyed a selection of readers for their thoughts and experiences with managed print services (MPS), there were still a few surprises from the 70 respondents.
Managed service
First among them was when we asked how many were using MPS, with 24% indicating they were. Despite providers of such services giving compelling evidence for savings of around 30% on print costs when moving to a MPS, it would seem that adoption is not as widespread as it could be.
Brian Whyte, managing director of Bryan S Ryan, said that despite the fact that there is often no capital outlay at all in moving to a MPS, Irish organisations are still not taking advantage.
"Most enterprises and mid-sized companies do a poor job when managing print," said Whyte. "Documents enable business processes, and with an average of 1-3% of a company’s annual revenues consumed by document production, things are unlikely to get any better unless a print management strategy is put in place.
"Controlling print expenses by outsourcing the management of your printers and output devices through a MPS contract could mean no capital expenditures are required since the agreement could be for the management of your existing fleet.
"Whilst it could be perceived that a lack of MPS use is a negative, Ireland is not ignoring the issue in our opinion-instead we would offer that we are merely lagging behind."
Business issues
When asked to rank the importance of a number of current business issues, only 16% of respondents ranked managed print services and documents management as most important, compared to 30% for security and governance and risk control (GRC), 25% for IT strategic return on investment (ROI) and 21% for business process optimisation (BPO).
Whyte reckons that this is still largely in line with expectations from his experience in MPS provision. "The results overall are in line with expectations. Security and governance are a very high priority for most senior IT professionals. What is significant is that taken together BPO and MPS score 38% a very high score and, in this light, MPS and business are intertwined.
"What we typically see is that MPS alone does not yield significantly high savings on its own," continued Whyte.
"Results in highly optimised clients from a standalone MPS rollout are often very acceptable but predictable. But when MPS and BPO are taken seriously, savings of 40% on print and supplies costs are readily attainable, but more importantly thereafter savings can continue to flow, particularly with workflow optimisation and paper archiving changes.
"In fact organisations that ignore the impact of high accessibility on their print environment can leave their organisation at risk, as employees may unwittingly leave documents on output trays for long periods or indefinitely.
Outsourced processes
On the subject of BPO, the survey respondents said that 40% had outsourced some business process, ranging from e-mail to content filtering, payroll and tech support to purchasing and storage. According to Whyte this is reflective of the individuality of businesses.
"Businesses are unique, and so too are the processes underpinning it; that’s why we can see that so many Irish organisations have yet to fully embrace process outsourcing. That said, an outsourcer knows how to get the best value for an enterprise better than most, allowing customers to rely on their expertise to deliver significant results. Using an outsourced provider also removes the need for employing an in-house expert. The provider assumes responsibility for the application, staff and or equipment, maintaining and managing it, and providing support to the end user.
"Outsourced business processes allow smaller businesses to enjoy all the benefits of an enterprise class system without having to pay traditional enterprise-level costs or for the staff traditionally required to maintain and support such a systems. We do think Ireland has still a long way to go to trusting key business processes to the outsource provider and this is clearly reflected in the figures," argues Whyte.
Cost focus
The survey asked about managing print and documents under a number of headings. The issue that emerged as the most important was reducing costs at 56%, more than double the next priority which was device management at 25%. Cost transparency came in at 20%, with document output management and remote monitoring coming in at 10 and 9% respectively.
"As we have seen over the past number of years, and underlined here, the key drivers behind why organisations outsource MPS vary by category. For some, management look to outsource in order to concentrate more time and resources on their core business. Others will engage MPS to optimise the utilisation of document output equipment; consolidate activities to increase efficiency and reduce costs and deploy a more fully implemented records management system. However, according to the survey, the top two reasons why organisations outsource document imaging are to reduce the overall printing costs and to relieve the IT department from the chores around print device management and reporting. Both of which can consume inordinate amounts of an IT departments time.
"According to industry estimates, during the past few years organisations have been spending about 1-3% of their revenue on activities related to printing, copying, scanning and faxing, so you can see why MPS and the cost of print is receiving a lot of attention."
IT help
The issue of IT resources and dealing with print and imaging issues was highlighted in the responses on service desk questions. More than half of respondents (57%) said that they had an internal help desk that dealt with print and imaging issues, of those 74% said that this was part of the general IT service desk.
"MPS is more than just cost per copy or providing an assessment to right size the fleet," Whyte asserts. "MPS entails the outsourcing of the fleet and document strategy to ensure the customer’s business process optimisation goals are met. In order to do this, an MPS provider must act as a professional services firm which offers multiple services in order to meet the customer’s requirements. In fact, over 70% of all MPS engagements include help desk services and end user training."
As convergence with IT is a major theme in print and imaging these days, the survey asked if those who employed a MPS did so as part of a wider information management strategy. A relatively low 13% indicated that they did.
Implications
Overall, the focus on costs, while justified in the results seen by many organisations adopting MPS, the focus on cost reduction and transparency shows a possible lack of understanding of the true potential of MPS.
"Perhaps the MPS suppliers have to carry some of the blame here," suggests Whyte. "Not communicating some of these enhanced benefits, over and above the hard cash savings, is a missed opportunity for supplier and client.
"The MPS industry needs to communicate benefits, such as consumables delivered to you before you run out, accurate remote meter readings and recording of errors as they happen so that device and fleet performance is optimised. In addition to software updates delivered without service interruption, all of which minimises demands on the clients internal IT support as your MPS partner actively manages all your printing, copying and scanning devices."
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