Print outsourcing: how Managed Print Services work

Outsourcing your print service (Managed Print Services, MPS) means that a provider takes over the company’s printers and multifunction devices, along with everything that goes with them: the equipment, consumables, servicing, updates and monitoring. The company pays a monthly fee or a cost per page, instead of paying separately for printers, cartridges, refills and repairs.

Outsourcing the management, maintenance and support of your network or cloud printers and multifunction devices makes your business more reliable and efficient and can lower the cost of an activity that almost every office depends on daily. The savings show up in consumables, servicing and software updates, whether you have a whole network of multifunction devices or a single printer.

RezolvIT offers companies Managed Print Services with the printer and consumables included. The offer covers a wide range of services that lower the cost of printing per page and the investment in equipment, peripherals and consumables: instead of paying for the purchase and delivery of the printer, the cartridges and their refills, maintenance, repairs or additional services, you pay a monthly fee, with no upfront cost.

What costs does an outsourced print service take over?

An MPS service usually covers the cost of printing per page, the investment in equipment, peripherals and consumables, plus service calls. The comparison below shows where each cost moves:

Cost	Printer bought by the company	Outsourced print service
Buying the printer	paid by the company, up front	usually included in the subscription or the cost per page
Delivery and installation	paid separately	usually included
Cartridges, toner and refills	bought by the company when they run out	delivered by the provider, often before they run out
Maintenance	paid for each service call	included in the contract
Repairs	paid for each service call	included in the contract
Additional services (configuration, network scanning, new users)	paid separately	included or agreed in advance in the contract

In 2015, we published a case study here for an HP LaserJet 1320, a monochrome printer with duplex printing: the purchase and upkeep costs of a printer the company bought were replaced by a fixed monthly fee. That model and those prices are no longer current, so we’ve removed them; the logic of the comparison remains the same.

Where do the cost savings come from?

The savings depend on how many pages you print, how many printers you have and how old they are, so there’s no single percentage that applies to every company. They usually come from:

• No upfront investment: you no longer buy equipment, and the cost is spread out month by month.
• A cost per page known in advance, which is easy to budget for.
• Equipment matched to your real volume: after a print analysis (how many pages, in which offices, color or black and white), small, wasteful printers are replaced with fewer network multifunction devices.
• Printing rules: duplex and black and white as the default settings, plus secure printing, where a document only prints once the user gets to the printer, so pages are no longer left forgotten in the tray.
• Consumables delivered on time, with no stock of cartridges in the cabinet and no days when nobody can print.
• Less time lost by employees on paper jams, repairs and suppliers.

When is it worth outsourcing your print service?

Outsourcing usually pays off when:

• you have many printers, of different models, each with its own consumables;
• you print a steady volume, month after month;
• your printers are old and break down often;
• nobody in the company has time to keep track of toner, repairs and suppliers.

If you print very little, a good printer, bought and properly maintained, may cost less than an MPS contract.

What should you check in an outsourced printing contract?

• What the cost per page includes: toner, spare parts, travel, labor, and what is paid separately.
• The minimum monthly volume: what you pay if you print less, and how much the pages over the included volume cost.
• The response time for faults, and whether you get a replacement device while yours is being repaired.
• The contract term and what happens to the equipment at the end.
• Reports: how many pages are printed, on which device and in which department.
• Data wiping: many multifunction devices store printed and scanned documents on their disk, so the disk must be securely wiped before the device leaves the company.

How do you protect your printers from attacks?

Network printers and multifunction devices are really small computers, so you protect them the same way:

• update the firmware and change the default administrator password;
• turn off the services you don’t use and don’t expose printers directly to the internet;
• keep your Windows print servers up to date as well: in 2021, the PrintNightmare vulnerability in the Print Spooler service showed how exposed an unpatched print server can be (details in our article What PrintNightmare is and what system administrators should do);
• use secure printing for confidential documents: personal data on a page forgotten in the tray falls under GDPR too.

Who takes care of the company’s printers?

RezolvIT can take over your printing through Managed Print Services, with the printer and consumables included, or look after the printers you already have. Printers and multifunction devices are part of IT maintenance: we configure them on the network, update them and keep them running alongside your computers and servers, and your colleagues’ problems reach us through the helpdesk. You’ll also find some practical tips in our article on printer optimization.

We start with a free IT audit, which also gives you the exact price. Write to us if you’d like to talk about the printers and printing in your company.