Print in the Channel - February 2023

MPS IN A HYBRID WORLD

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approach, working closely with our customers and their employees to analyse their current business processes and requirements so that we can align our service to their needs to deliver results today and further optimise organised into three stages: consultation, implementation and management and optimisation. Consult: True MPS starts with a meticulous joint analysis of your current business processes and requirements. Only if we understand your business can we advise you on which solution will best help you succeed. We also involve your employees in the analysis. After all, they are often best placed to evaluate current processes and opportunities for improvement. Implement: Once we have, together, defined the best document infrastructure, we don’t only deliver this. We provide you with project management support, develop a roll- out plan and introduce employees concerned to the new processes and procedures. In this way, we turn the ideas and approaches that have been developed into success stories. Manage: Workflo provides customers with individually tailored services to manage and administer a new document infrastructure. They decide which MPS services are used, whether it is a turnkey solution that sees Workflo undertake full ownership of the network they simply provide support to an in- house IT team. operations for the future,” he says. Michael adds that this approach is More than just print Dale Needham, director of MPS Group, adds that it isn’t just print that needs to be considered. “Work is a thing you do, not a place you go to,” he says. “Having the ability for workers to access files, data and documents is key. A big growth area for us has been document management solutions, share drives and the like and how people are moving documents around the building and around the business.” For example, e-signature software has become increasingly important in the past three years. “Pre-pandemic, most people didn’t use e-signature software, everything was paper and pen and salespeople would think nothing of driving 100 miles to sit in front of somebody with piece of paper with a view to signing it. Now with DocuSign and the like, we quickly adapted. It reduces paperwork, reduces the need for print and again, how businesses have adapted to a

workflow optimisation and data analytics, all of which improve customers’ overall efficiency and productivity, making them more competitive in their respective markets. Chris Bates, business unit manager, print and supplies, UK at TD SYNNEX, agrees. “Hybrid working is one of the main factors driving more organisations to use managed print services,” he says. “As businesses embrace new working practices, they face the challenge of managing a much more distributed estate of devices and it makes a lot of sense to contract the management of those devices out to a third party. Today, that does not need to be a dedicated specialist provider of managed print services. For example, with OpenMPS from TD SYNNEX any reseller business can offer to take on the management of print devices for their customers without making any up-front investment. “Hybrid workers will probably have access to shared print devices in the workplace and their own small personal device at home. They probably won’t monitor ink levels on either device very closely, so having an automated service that provides a replacement automatically saves them a lot of time and avoids the potential for inconvenience. It’s the same with maintenance cover – it’s much easier if they don’t have to worry about that and it’s all handled by a managed service. “For organisations that settle into a pattern of hybrid working – and most are now doing that, it seems – using managed print services makes a lot of sense, both from an organisational and a cost perspective. Even in those scenarios where most workers do return to the office full-time, the appeal of using a managed print service is just as strong. As they become more dependent on the IT systems and adopt hybrid infrastructures – with some IT on premises and some in the cloud – they will contract more of their core IT functions to external providers.” Consultative approach To take advantage of the opportunities in this market, resellers need to adopt a role as a trusted adviser to their customers on every aspect of IT, Chris adds. “They act as consultants as well as providers of solutions and services. Customers will want and expect to trust their advice on managed services as much as they trust their advice on IT solutions, cloud services, and, of course, print.” Michael Field, managing director at Workflo Solutions, agrees that a consultative approach is required. “We adopt a consultative

Chris Bates business unit manager – print and supplies, UK and Ireland TD SYNNEX

uk.tdsynnex.com

Michael Field managing director Workflo Solutions

workflo-solutions.co.uk

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