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Is your printing tech impacting your business' productivity?

A disorganised print environment can complicate workflows and generally slow down operations. Without adequate training, complex technology can hinder otherwise simple day-to-day tasks.

Mark Self, our MPS bid manager has shared some of his best insights on getting the most out of your print technology.

Mark Self, MPS bid manager at Brother UK
Mark Self, MPS bid manager at Brother UK

What products or services would you recommend specifically for a business whose main priority is to increase productivity?

The first thing to get to grips with is understanding your current environment; that means mapping out your workflows and creating a visual diagram or topology.

It’s also really valuable to pinpoint where you want to increase productivity and how it relates to your overall business objectives. For example, is it reduced downtime? Cost savings? Streamlined workflows?

By having your current environment and workflows mapped out it’s much easier to identify problems and bottlenecks. It’s easier to see what products and services can help to increase productivity.

Brother’s managed print services are available to support you in creating efficiencies within your business. A managed print service provider, like Brother, can work with you to design a bespoke solution that incorporates print restrictions, document management and scanning solutions to create a streamlined way of working.

I’d also recommend reading up on the wider productivity challenges facing businesses and the role that IT professionals can play in transforming their organisation to tackle these.

What are the potential consequences of printing technology with too much functionality?

It’s the same as with any technology - most users only require basic functionality and cramming the technology with unnecessary functions often reduces productivity by making it more difficult to find the functions you need.

Imagine replacing a rotary dial telephone with the latest smartphone technology, if you had only ever made phone calls you would find the smartphone very confusing. I think that’s a good analogy for having an over-complicated solution.

On the other side of that, what are the potential consequences of not enough functionality?

You need to make sure there is enough functionality to future-proof your business. For example, a USB connected printer may suit you in the short-term, but thinking ahead it may make sense to ensure certain functionalities, such as wireless capabilities are available, rather than incorporating the cost to your print fleet at a later stage when upgrading.

What are the values of using MPS for an organisation looking to improve their productivity?

MPS is about providing the ability to print wherever and whenever your business requires, which naturally drives productivity. For a provider to be able to offer an efficient, cost-effective service, we’d need to understand your business.

Our key themes are cost efficiency, security, productivity, reliability, security, sustainability and workflow. We use these themes to tailor our managed print services to our customers, enabling them to tackle a range of key business challenges.

What can you expect from Brother’s auditing as part of the MPS process?

When it comes to the audit, it’s about understanding as much as we can about your environment, identifying gaps and barriers to a productive workflow.

The initial things we look at are: the age and condition of the print fleet, the types of documents being printed, the layout of printers in the physical environment and users’ printing activity and requirements.

How does Brother’s auditing process pinpoint areas for increased productivity?

First of all, we’ll start by detailing your current environment, workflows and costs. Once we have a good picture of your availability, utilisation, capacity, engine life and obsolescence, we’ll determine where increased productivity can be realised.

For example, by identifying trends in supply use, we can design a solution which calculates how much ink or toner is needed and when. Services such as automated supply management can then be integrated into the solution to help manage supplies and relieve the IT staff for deployment on other jobs.

This should both help your print environment to run smoothly, without downtime, and make sure your workforce is getting the most out of their time.

If you’re looking to make productivity gains or want to see how else your organisation can benefit from a managed print service, get in touch with one of our team here.




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