tashatuvango - Fotolia
Managed print moving into the large format world
The appeal of managed print services is widening beyond the small format world to include larger printers
The concept of selling managed print services to those customers using standard hardware has become well established and it is moving into the large format world.
An increasing number of large format print specialists are starting to offer managed print services to customers that also want to incorporate some of the predictability of price that comes from an MPS contract.
The small format world has been shifting over to managed print for the last few years and an example of the motivation for those decisions could be seen in the move made by Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust (C&I) back in November to appoint Capita Managed Print Services to look after that side of its operations. The trust was hoping for a 40% reduction in printing costs.
Phil Oakley, UKI large format business manager at HP, said that the managed print trend had become one of the main features of the PageWide large format market and as a result it had been increasing its channel base.
"In some ways it is not that different from selling a fleet of A3 devices to a customer with enterprise managed print," he added "The ease of use [of the printers] has attracted new partners to our programes."
He said that it was making sure that those signed up to the channel programme were in a position to take the proposition out to the key customers of large format, including construction, engineering and architecture.
Some of the latest partners include some of the reprographic houses that made moves to make sure they remained relevant for customers and looked to consolidate hardware and had been attracted by the HP proposition as well as the chance to sell services.
Some of the recent examples of those working with the vendor have been national chains that have now begun to use the HP technology.
"They are speaking to HP to understand the print technology...service providers are now becoming reselling partners," said Oakley.
"We are trying to make sure enterprises think about large and small format when they think about managed print," he added.
HP is looking to take market share from rivals and is leaning on the channel as well as expecting its PageWide hardware proposition to make the difference.
