The involvement of managing of hardcore devices such as printers, multifunction devices, fax machines and copiers is known as Managed Print Services (MPS). Managed Document Services (MDS) is closely related to Managed Print Service (MDS) in which the vendor such as Printercorp sees this service as much more than just simply a printing service. MPS/MDS are branches of a bigger Managed Services market, even though MPS/MDS have the unique application which is required for an organization. Managed Print services have much definition in the market place, such as on- source contract with on line staff and ranging as far as re-banking with break fix contract.
MPS have four categories which are facilitated by key software applications. These are: IT manage the nature of print and the volume; print devices in the environment are managed and monitor by Device Management Software: software is discovered and design to plan and analyze for changes which are required in the implementation of a MPS and scan routing software which do route scans to different destinations such as network folder, email or workflows and fax servers.
The four (4) groups of MPS providers are the OEMS such as HP, Canon, Konica , Samsung, Lexmark, Minolta, Toshiba and Xerox. These OEMs provides independent brand of MPS. Services offer by Xerox and HP enhances productivity, reduce ownership cost, and energy consumption.
Another group of organization type that engaged in MPS is the System Integrators. This group includes Steria, Computacenter, Accenture, SCC, Capgemini and Fujitus Services. These organizations have contract with clients which append MPS to a broader Managed Services. In addition, Managed Service Providers includes IT and Copier resellers. Numbers of companies have focus in this area of group focusing on SMB space. The last group of MPS provider is the Suppliers Based Providers which include Staples, Office Depot and office Max.
MPS can be defined by three core aspects .However, software applications and services of a wide variety can be added in this core. Such core aspects can be defined as: consolidated billing with management information, equipment fleet of proactive maintenance and environment ongoing optimization which cater for the contract life. The main goal of managed print services is to help an organization cut its costs.
