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MPS
It is customary to divide managed
print offerings into Basic Print
Services (BPS), consisting
of device and consumables
monitoring with alerts and easy
ordering when new supplies are
required, and Managed Print
Services (MPS), which offer pro-
active consumables management
and the assessment, right-sizing
and continuous improvement of a
printer fleet.
Now, Lexmark is introducing a
third category. Sitting somewhere
between a BPS and an MPS, the
Lexmark Advantage MPS Core
Program is a post-sales service and
support offering for Lexmark print
devices sold or leased by a reseller.
It provides:
n
proactive consumables monitoring,
with just-in-time delivery of
replacement supplies;
n
device monitoring;
n
remote collection of page counts
via cloud services;
n
servicing and maintenance;
n
quarterly billing;
n
a single click charge;
n
no minimum number of devices;
n
no minimum print volumes.
Advantage MPS Core Program
includes elements not normally
found in a BPS, such as proactive
consumables management, but also
lacks key features of an MPS, notably
printer fleet assessments/right-sizing
and multi-vendor device support.
Leaning on Lexmark
The service is sold and billed to
customers by local IT resellers but
almost all elements are actually
delivered by Lexmark.
Martin Fairman, Lexmark channel
sales director, UK & Ireland, said:
“We do all the heavy lifting for a
reseller. We will set up software on
the end user site so that we can
monitor the estate; we will do all the
proactive consumables management,
which is a unique part of our offering;
and we will do all of the maintenance
and all of the servicing
necessary for the life of
the contract.”
This gives customers the
reassurance that their printers are
being managed by a global business
and MPS leader with more than 20
years experience in delivering MPS to
some of the world’s leading brands.
Simple entry point
The Advantage MPS Core Program
is specially designed to give SMEs
and IT resellers a simple entry point
to MPS, which is why expensive,
time-consuming fleet assessments
are deliberately not part of the
programme. Nor are there minimum
fleet sizes or page volumes.
“There’s no minimum number of
devices,” explained Fairman. “And
no minimum bill. Whether the end
user prints 1 page or 1,000 pages,
we will only charge for what they
print and that is a fixed cost per copy
throughout the contract. There is also
a small monthly service charge per
device that covers all maintenance
for the life of a contract and the
delivery of consumables to the end
user’s site. We’ve made it a really
simple, but very comprehensive
package.”
Additional services
The simplicity of the Advantage MPS
Core Program is one of its selling
points, but for those who wish, it also
provides a springboard to make on-
going improvements to printing and
document processes throughout the
term of a contract.
“The data collection tool can
highlight where one machine is being
over-utilised or show how many scans
are going through a device, which
raises another conversation the
reseller can have with the end user –
what are you doing with that?; how are
you capturing that data once you’ve
scanned it in?,” explained Fairman.
He points out that through the
acquisitions Lexmark has made
since 2010, it now has a broad
portfolio of software solutions that
businesses can use to digitise their
business processes and workflows.
As an example, Fairman cites a new
Lexmark product called AccuRead
Automate that resides on an MFP
and can be operated via the device’s
colour touchscreen display.
“You can go into accounts payable,
download the application software,
put it into learn mode and the
machine will very quickly learn what a
purchase order from a supplier looks
like. You then take it out of learn
mode and ask it to recognise four key
fields, e.g. PO number, which it will
extract from a scanned document
and put into a repository to be acted
upon. It takes you away from the
manual process of getting a PO,
taking off all the info and retyping it
into Sage or whatever,” he said.
No debate
Fairman added that using Lexmark
solutions with Lexmark devices,
rather than third party software, has
the added benefit that should there
be a problem, there is no debate
about whether the fault lies with
the Lexmark MFP or the third party
software application.
Advantage MPS Core Program
has some limitations – for example,
it is only available for Lexmark
devices – but for businesses that
want to reduce the burden of printer
management and remove the need
to stock consumables, it provides an
interesting third way between an entry-
level BPS and a more complex MPS.
The middle way
There’s no
minimum
number of
devices and
no minimum
bill. We will
only charge
for what a
business
prints and
that is a
fixed cost
per copy
throughout
the contract.
Lexmark has launched a new MPS programme that gives SMEs the
benefits of proactive consumables management without the expense
of print audits
