What’s the Difference Between Managed Print and Content Services?

Introduction

These days, trying to run an office environment without a solid printing system in place is likely to be an exercise in frustration, if indeed it’ll work at all. No matter what kind of business you’re in or what your industry is, odds are you’ll need some way to handle printing. Even though email technology and digital memos are more advanced than ever, we still haven’t found a workable replacement for good old-fashioned printing, which is why it’s something that you need to consider one of your top priorities when it comes to organizing your workspace.

However, despite its widespread presence in the working world, printing isn’t actually handled as well as it could be in a lot of cases. This is down to the fact that printing itself is a specialized industry, and most companies simply don’t have the workforce or the know-how to best implemented these kinds of systems themselves. In fact, printing is surprisingly poorly-handled in a lot of cases, leaving a ton of room for potential improvement and further streamlining of your activities and costs. That’s where managed print services in Toronto come into play.

In the following article we’ll be breaking down what managed print services in Toronto are, why they’re so important, and what the difference is between managed print services and standard content services.

What Are Managed Print Services?

By coming on board with one of the leading managed print services that are available in Toronto, you’ll be effectively outsourcing the bulk of your printing needs to organizations which have been specifically designed to handle exactly that. Basically speaking, a managed print service in Toronto is a partnership your business will enter into with a print provider, which is a company that specializes in optimizing your printing environment as well as the way you manage it.

The core principle is that by designing customized solutions to your business’s print needs, managed print services in Toronto can help you to cut wasteful procedures out of your overall business process. The support these kinds of companies offer is wide-ranging and takes into account the printing equipment itself that would be best suited to your day-to-day operations, as well as covering any and all ongoing maintenance. Consistent, reliable support for your printing needs is also provided as standard with most managed print services, as is a more high-level kind of management protocol that can keep things ticking over without needing any more input from your end.

Why Do Managed Print Services Help So Much?

The key selling point of managed print services has to do with just how inefficient most current printing processes are. It stands to reason, after all; printing on a large, business-wide scale is a surprisingly complicated topic, and by attempting to do it all on your own you’re leaving yourself open to potentially clogging up your employees’ schedules with work that could be outsourced instead, which would free them up to focus on business-specific tasks.

There are also plenty of numbers to back up the fact that most companies don’t handle printing services as well as they might like to. For example, the standard IT department in any given company can spend between 5% and 15% of its time on printing issues, which is a totally unnecessary and unhelpful expenditure of energy, time, and capital that could be better spent on more technical, IT-related issues. Furthermore, even though the costs of printing documents can account for around 10% of total production expenses, nearly 9 out of every 10 companies don’t actually keep track of what they’re spending on their printing needs, making the creation of reasonable, workable budgets all the more challenging.

How Do Managed Print Services in Toronto Differ from Content Services?

The main thing that separates managed print services from standard content services is that by engaging with the former option, you’re bridging a useful gap between retail and commercial printing options, each of which has its own set of benefits and disadvantages. Retailers can sell you the printing equipment you’ll need, but you won’t be getting any kind of wholesale discount. You’ll also be on your own when it comes to working out what kind of equipment array and setup you actually need, as well as when it comes to the areas of troubleshooting, maintenance, repair, and stock-replenishment.

Commercial printing services, on the other hand, will take your printing needs under their own wing by handling all of the projects you need printing. You won’t need to buy or maintain any of your own printing equipment, which would translate to major savings if commercial services weren’t significantly more expensive than retail printing services — which they are.

Occupying a useful middle ground between the two (both in terms of price and in terms of the level of support available), managed print services in Toronto provide replacement and regular review services, as well as streamlined, efficient processes for tracking and controlling day-to-day usage and capital expenditure. Unlike content services, managed print services aren’t related to what actually gets printed. Rather, they’re a way to ensure that you’re not spending any more time and money on your printing needs than you absolutely have to, which goes a long way towards helping tip things towards the black in the monthly roundup of costs and expenses.

Takeaway

In the final analysis, perhaps the best way to think of managed print services in Toronto is as a means of refining any and all printing you could possibly need to do without sacrificing on the amount of support and maintenance available. If you’re still on the fence about whether or not managed print service is right for your business, why not send us an email here at integr8mps.com? We’re the most advanced managed print service in Toronto, and we’d love to show you how we can work hand-in-hand with your business in order to make things as easy — and as profitable — as possible.