What is Cost Management (MPS) and why would I want to provide it to my customer?

More than ever, products are being commoditized and marginalized, forcing you to compete solely on price – a game you can’t really win. In this kind of environment your margins fall, and competition becomes more intense. The only way you can overcome such demanding challenges to your business is to reinvent yourself; create new business paradigms that provides your customers with greater value – value that very few of your competitors can provide or are too lazy and complacent to provide – value that can generate higher profit margins for you while eliminating much of your competition. This is Cost Management, more commonly referred to today as Managed Print Services (MPS). More than anything, it is a means for you to change the value proposition you bring to market. Unlike a commodity, Cost Management is a strategic solution that can’t be marginalized!

Cost Management is an outsourcing service by which you take on full responsibility for a company’s print environment, including the maintenance, support, and acquisition of all print devices and consumables. You accept full financial responsibility for maintaining, protecting, utilizing and deploying assets in a way that will create the greatest efficiency of operation and return on investment for both you and your customer. Such services are a true shifting of financial responsibility and accountability. Cost Management is about continuous process improvement and cost savings.

As a Cost Management service provider, you seek to make the costs associated with print management more visible, and reduce them through ongoing analysis and process improvement. This type of service requires having access to meaningful data, and being able to analyze that data in order to drive efficiencies and cost savings. You look to reduce and manage the long term cost of print. You’re not just concerned about cost savings; you’re also concerned about process improvement and cost avoidance. This is accomplished through the ongoing evaluation of the proper utilization of equipment and consumables, by first identifying, then controlling, and subsequently reducing print costs. While immediate results are satisfying, it’s the continuous, long‐term management of print costs that create the greatest and most significant value, and will differentiate you from your competitors.

Cost Management processes and practices create such a high level of trust and cooperation between a service provider and their customers that print management often becomes less of a service commodity and more of a strategic, long term business partnership that extends beyond mere repair and maintenance, and into operational strategy and support. A Cost Management approach to print management will likely strengthen your relationship with your client, as your client comes to appreciate and perceive the value of your services, your advice, and understands the cost structure under which you and they operate. Most importantly, the processes and data required to execute a Cost Management program will drive greater operational efficiencies in account management, which can lead to improvements in profit margins. Cost Management is about greater responsibility and control. It’s also what customers are beginning to demand more than ever of their service providers.