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As an MSP, you and your clients both want your service to be as smooth and seamless as possible. However, there will always be some bumps in the road that your MSP has no control over.
In many cases, one of those wild cards is print. If your client has an unreliable print vendor, this can put stress on your relationship with them.
Confused clients will contact your MSP in need of emergency print support. And for businesses with multiple locations with multiple different print service providers, the chaos of dealing with print issues is multiplied.
Here at Print Partner, we partner with MSPs across the United States to help improve collaboration with print-related support requests for multi-site companies across the country. We’ve seen firsthand how much smoother operations become when consolidating multi-location print into one provider.
This article covers why your multi-site clients should use the same print vendor for all of their locations, and how this is beneficial for both your clients’ business and your MSP. Educating your clients on these potential benefits will help you build trust with them while giving them enormous value.
1. Wasted Money on Poorly-Managed Print
Most mid to large-scale companies have their pockets getting picked from every direction.
Businesses have a Jenga tower of expenses to deal with, including, but certainly not limited to, HR, insurance, vendors, hardware refreshes, … I could fill the rest of this page listing the never-ending series of leaks in every business pipeline.
With so many fees to manage, do you think managing print spend is at the top of most businesses’ priority list? Very likely not.
A survey from Small Business Trends studied over 1000 small to mid-sized businesses and found that 64% of them are unable to track their print device cost nor can they track print usage.
The unfortunate truth is that internal accounting teams are often overloaded with other factors and are too busy to focus on things like print spend.
Impact, an MSP and print provider, compiled a list of some very telling statistics in regards to wasted print:
- 17% of printed documents go unread
- The average employee’s printing habits cost companies $725 per person
- On average, companies underestimate their printing costs by 40%
After reviewing the market trends, it becomes abundantly clear that print is a silent killer to many office budgets. And when multiple locations are involved, the costs multiply.
Standardizing print will also help businesses identify costly issues that may be permeating throughout locations. When print is handled by a single provider, the vendor can track trends and issues proactively.
For example, if all locations have approximately the same number of employees, but one location has three times the amount spent on print than the others, companies can be notified of this and investigate why.
A reliable managed print provider can track trends within your clients’ businesses to see which locations are spending more or less on print and why. Explaining this to your clients will save them money and deepen your business relationship with them.
2. Standardization of Print Solutions
Using a single print provider across multiple locations is a key piece of coordinating the chaos that can come from juggling multiple business sites.
Score, a nonprofit organization that coaches small businesses, lists six tips for managing multiple business locations.
In Tip #1, Score advises multi-site businesses to standardize procedures across all locations, and a big piece of standardization is print.
Using different managed print vendors opens the potential for having completely different printer products across different sites. One site could have Kyocera copiers, one site could have Xerox copiers, etc.
Differences in print can add up and bog down workflow.
For example, an employee travels to a different site in the company that they may not regularly work at. If the printer systems are all under the same umbrella, there will be no security issues; an employee registered at one branch could easily be granted access to printers at other sites.
However, if different sites have different print management, the new employee may have to re-register his or her information at the new site, along with learning a new system.
Multiply this by the number of employees transferring sites, and this can create a huge headache for employees, their supervisors and print vendors.
Employee handbooks and training materials may have to be rewritten or changed between sites as well, which will end up wasting more time and resources.
As for the rest of its list, Score dedicates Tips #3 and #4 to enhancing communication, and Tip #6 is about simplifying technology, which includes print.
“You’ll make your life and your employees’ lives a lot simpler if you have the right tools to manage multiple locations,” reads Score’s article. Simplifying technology “can save you time and free you up for more one-on-one meetings and big-picture thinking.”
Standardizing print across locations will optimize workflow and detect issues that may have never been noticed if two, three or five different companies had their hands on your client's print.
3. Print Quality Consistency
Let’s compare two hypothetical, realistic companies. Business A has 5 locations, and one print vendor. Business B has 5 locations and 5 print vendors; a different vendor for each one.
Which business would you guess has a more cohesive service structure?
The truth is that every managed print company has its own way of doing things. This means different standards when it comes to customer service, repair time, product quality, and so on.
“The great experience your customers get in one store should be just as good in all your locations,” reads Score’s article on managing multiple business sites.
As an MSP, which business would you rather work with?
At Business B, one location may have a print company that is quick on repairs and collaborates with your MSP. But maybe at another location, their print company cold transfers them to you guys. And at another location, their phone number is out of service. (If you’ve been in the MSP space long enough, you’re probably getting war flashbacks right about now.)
This can lead to your MSP and your clients wasting hours.
Impact’s article estimates that IT companies spend an average of 15% of their time dealing with printers. If your business is like other MSPs, you’ve likely wasted countless hours working on printers you are not equipped to service.
Working with a company like Business A, MSPs can expect the same standards throughout all locations. Your MSP can create a universal game plan on how to handle the client that is standardized among all sites.
This means fewer headaches, fewer out-of-service phone numbers and fewer variables overall.
To learn more about how print vendors handle multi-site clients, read: How Professional Print Agencies Manage National Clients
Consolidating Print with Print Partner
Providing excellent customer service should always be your top priority as an MSP. And while print may not be your focus, it is an essential piece.
Partnering with a trusted print service provider will make your business run smoother, and referring your clients to a quality managed print service vendor will deepen your relationships with them. Your clients will thank you for the added value you have provided to them, elevating your status from being seen as just the “IT guy” to a trusted service advisor.
Here at Print Partner, we are dedicated to facilitating meaningful business partnerships with MSPs. We will work side-by-side with you to provide the best possible print experience for your business and your clients.
We are the trusted managed print provider to multi-site companies throughout the country and will make you look GOOD when you refer us to your clients. Plus, we’ll pay you at least $250 for each introduction and $1,000 for each copier sold.
