Managed Print Services Association

admin — Thu, 03 May 2012 12:23:28 +0000

Solution WorX is an active member of the Managed Print Services Association (MPSA). The MPSA was founded by a visionary group of industry pioneers, who then handed off the association reins and responsibilities to an equally dedicated group of MPS professionals and end users from all corners of the industry. Today the MPSA is guided and grown by volunteers from companies like Bob Jones University, GreatAmerica Leasing, Nationwide Insurance, Mwai and Strategy Development, to name just a few. The independent, not-for-profit MSPA organization belongs to the MPS community, from end users to channel organizations to service providers and manufacturers. Members share common goals of industry standards, best practices and successful MPS outcomes. For more information, visit http://yourmpsa.com/.

MPS The age of the user: by Jannes du Plooy

admin — Thu, 03 May 2012 12:22:39 +0000

In 2009 I attended the first European conference on MPS in Amsterdam. Everyone was discussing MPS and stating their leadership “status” in the industry – everyone had a so-called “MPS strategy.” I felt a bit despondent as I was under the impression that Solution WorX was the leader, having been in the industry since 2002, focusing exclusively on MPS.
During 2010 more companies came on board announcing that they are now specializing in MPS. Some even claimed to be the biggest in their respective markets – even though they had not yet closed one single deal. ICT companies came on board, hardware vendors and consulting businesses announced joint ventures that would transform the industry and hardware vendors collaborated with other brands, enabling them to service the market.
After evaluating all of the talk and hype, I soon realized that restructuring your business and ring fencing your printer service and maintenance business does not automatically make you a leader in your market, despite your PR efforts. Having a strategy means very little. Implementing your strategy is far more compelling and challenging.
Hardware vendors are declared leaders in MPS, featuring in all sorts of quadrants because they rename their “all-in lease” or “pay-per-print” contracts (that excludes many items relating to printing) as MPS. Even the so-called “Office Automation craze” of the late 90s (a thoughtless like-for-like replacement with a newer model) got a spot on the “Bulldog with Lipstick Top Ten Hit Parade of Renaming My Contracts as MPS.” This is not MPS and during 2010 it became apparent that customers are much more informed about what they want and what the market is actually disguising as “MPS.” Customers finally realized: “If you do what you did, you get what you’ve got!”
Case in point: A large financial services organization in South Africa issued an RFP inviting mainly the traditional “bulldogs” to take part in what appeared to be a hybrid MPS requirement. The RFP still had a strong focus on hardware, as the client did not really understand its own cost.
After evaluating all the tenders and presentations by the various vendors and service providers (which included Solution WorX), the client withdrew the RFP and indicated that they first needed to understand where they are (their own cost, etc.) before embarking on a way forward. Knowing your own cost and asset base is the basic fundamental for the successful implementation of any MPS strategy. They were fortunate to admit that their initial approach was not holistic and they are in the process of determining where they stand – a great example of how customers are starting to realize they have been, and still are in many cases, being taken for a ride in an old car with a new paint job and license plates.
During one of the break-out sessions at the 2010 MPS Conference in Barcelona, David Cameron, a Photizo Group representative, asked a very relevant question. He wanted the group to share how they deal with no minimum billing and financing in their MPS assignments / contracts / projects. The blank expressions and the subsequent responses by two or three of the larger vendors revealed that they have not dealt with such issues before because their solutions do not address the subject, making it crystal clear to me that the market still has a long way to go when shifting from renaming old existing offerings to getting to the No Print, No Pay© all inclusive managed service – the so-called “limousine service” that MPS is really all about.
In South Africa, two listed ICT companies have indicated that they are pursuing MPS aggressively. The one, in partnership with Solution WorX, have submitted a number of proposals to large- and medium-sized clients, and recently we secured our first win as a JV
In 2010 we saw a distinct trend where customers of traditional vendors were moving away to a solution where they are interested in a complete service and not a “box drop” with a small service element.
I believe that this will become the norm – the days of uninformed customers that can be duped into anything are over. The MPS hype created by traditional vendors has had one distinct result: End-users are finally asking the right questions and demands a full service. If you do not adapt to it, a “new paint job” will no longer help!

News Release

admin — Thu, 03 May 2012 12:20:56 +0000

Jannes du Plooy, CEO of Solution WorX will be addressing the annual international Managed Print Services (MPS) conference in Barcelona (Spain). The conference is presented by the Photizo Group, leaders in market research in the MPS industry and will be running from 10 to 12 November 2010.

Du Plooy will be touching on the following aspects of MPS:

· How does a company / organisation save millions through implementing brand independent MPS?

· How can a company drastically decrease their Carbon Footprint through MPS?

· What to look for when choosing the correct MPS partner.

Solution WorX was founded in 2002 as a South African brand independent MPS company.

With more than 110 people full time employed focussing exclusively on MPS, more than 2,400 printer support specialists in its channel network across 60 service centres in Southern Africa coupled with the unique MPS collaboration approach that Solution WorX created, they have established themselves as a leader in MPS with clients that include several Financial Services companies, Retail and Mining. (Investec, JD Group, Debswana)

Optimising the Desktop and Corridor Print Environment

admin — Thu, 03 May 2012 12:13:12 +0000

The procurement of output devices (copiers, faxes, printers and scanners) is fast becoming a science in its own right. This commodity group traditionally falls under an organisation’s ‘indirect spend’ category (i.e. non-core business requirements), and as such is often not on the radar of the procurement department. This is partly the case for the reason that “various personnel organisations usually have the authority to procure hardware, software and / or consumables for the output devices spend, and thus the spend will accordingly be spread across many different items in the income statement”, Jannes du Plooy, Chief Executive Officer of Solution WorX, said in a recent interview.

Furthermore, organisations procure hardware as a commodity because it is easy to evaluate hardware tenders. However, procuring hardware based on individual and collective user and business requirements is far more complicated than merely buying some hardware. These requirements, coupled with sustainable savings through Desktop and Corridor Managed Print Services, is essential if an organisation wants to ensure that they print effectively, efficiently and economically.

In recent times, South Africa has caught up with the international trend of utilising the services of specialised Desktop and Corridor Print Management Services. Du Plooy pointed out that “we, as a specialised service provider, are not in the business of selling hardware or consumables, but rather focus our expertise on managing output and reducing the exuberantly high cost of running print devices. Very few organisations know what their actual cost of printing is and in most cases do not understand the total cost of printing. Hardware vendors have also traditionally dominated the market and prefer that buyers do not know what they are actually paying. We, on the other hand, look after an organisation’s entire fleet of output devices and clearly demonstrate to a client what they are currently spending on document output. This includes all geographies where the organisation operates, thus no printer, copier, scanner or multi-functional device can or must be left out of the equation. Only then will an organisation enjoy the maximum benefit of what we offer”.
When examining the domain of output devices, there is a clear distinction between the concepts of ‘Office Automation’ and ‘Desktop and Corridor Managed Print Services’.

In closing, Du Plooy said “in our experience most clients have over-invested in hardware and do not need a complete technology refresh, but rather a redeployment of hardware and better utilisation and management of this hardware”.

In our next article on this topic we will investigate why the above trend seems to run rampant in the industry.

Jannes du Plooy can be contacted on the details below:
Telephone: +27 86 170 5907
Cell: +27 83 397 7739
E-Mail: jannes@swx.co.za