Mike Feldman 
Vice President and General Manager
Enterprise Sales and Services
IPG-Americas

Astonishing economic challenges have driven businesses to reevaluate capital spending, and face the stark reality that they must make cuts. As a result, pitches from every angle have cropped up, often spinning defense of this initiative or that program, without true ROI focus and objectivity. 

Well, last week I was thrilled to see Wall Street Journal reporter William M. Bulkeley take an objective, ROI-focused look at a pitch that you’ve seen me give week after week over the past year. 

That pitch? Managed Print Services Offer True Cost Savings.

In ‘Xerox Tries to Go Beyond Copiers’ (The Wall Street Journal 2/24), Bulkeley focused on companies like HP and Xerox who offer managed print services – consulting services offered to help enterprises reduce the number of printers in their fleet and cut printing costs.  While HP’s approach to managed print services offering goes beyond just device reduction strategies – extending to management and workflow improvements – it is refreshing to see mainstream recognition -- in the form of a Wall Street Journal article no less -- highlighting the impressive savings big companies can expect by signing on for a managed print services implementation. 

I encourage you to give the article a read – especially if you are looking for significant ways to cut costs.  Here are some highlights:

The WSJ quotes Gartner analyst Ken Weilerstein as saying that, “Most organizations don't know how many devices they have and how many pages they print…it's not unusual to see dozens of suppliers and hundreds of different models."

With networked printers, a company can keep track of how much each worker prints and copies and restrict use of color, which costs three-or-four times more per page than black and white. The devices print on both sides of paper, reducing paper usage by 30% or so.

Companies also save space, maintenance costs and electricity by consolidating on a uniform fleet of multifunction devices, which are shared by five to 10 employees.

My experience has been that over the past 5 years, enterprises have steadily taken more and more notice of the true cost savings to be found within their imaging and printing infrastructure.  In fact, Tom Codd, director of marketing for HP Worldwide Sales and Services told the WSJ that, 'HP's managed print services business has been growing at a 38% annual rate since 2004.' 

Take a step back and evaluate which investments you can make now that will really help your bottom line.  Interested in learning more? Visit HP’s Managed Print Services portfolio.