Like some unexpected turn in a film, we've got a plot twist in the MpS movie just around the corner...there may be a ball-gag involved...
Prints are fading, click charges disappearing, copier installs dropping and margins crashing.
If you're the same team who felt inkjet was the next panacea - see Lexmark.
If you still think there are no secular shifts in print - see HP.
If you're waiting for the economic recovery - see Sharp.
If you're looking for margins in color - see Kodak.
The next frontier in Managed print Services, indeed, in all of managed services, is not mobile print, it is Self-Maintained Service Programs. "Self" referring to client supported, NOT reseller supported programs and more specifically, insourced, not outsourced, MpS/MS.
More and more clients will provide their own, internal MPS program. Wanna know why? In a word, INTENT.
Manged Print Services in its most rudimentary form, is pitched as a cost reduction process which it usually is - for the first 6 months. Then the costs level off, sometimes returning back to or exceeding pre-MPS pricing. The attractiveness of 'vendor-agnostic' loses its gleam soon after the entire fleet has been refreshed under a single vendor - the MpS vendor.
Clients are not stupid. They are reviewing the results of many expiring, first generation, MpS contracts. And some don't like what they see: few goals met. Frustrated with the mystery, many will turn from outsourcing managed print services to creating internal IT initiatives tasked with REAL reduction in machines, vendors, prints and costs. Instead of overseeing multiple managed print/managed services definitions and sifting through messages of "manufacture agnostic" and "proactive service dispatch" - pure in INTENT, they'll do it themselves.
Think about it:
Quarterly MPS business reviews are not often enough - how about 15 minute updates during every, weekly IT meeting.
Fleet refresh according to a vendor's technology road map? No. Fleet reduction or right sizing according to internal IT discovery AND corporate culture considerations.
Remote monitoring and automatic toner delivery continues as a pass through from the manufacturer to deskside. Only now, internal IT staff or administration monitor delivery of toner and service, utilizing the latest monitor-from-the-cloud application.
And these are just three examples, there are so many more.
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "wait...after all the investment into managed print services, these OEMs are going to buy the farm, being relegated to simply providing boxes instead of solutions..."
Really?
Most OEMs are set up to manufacture and deliver machines not services. I would think they might be looking at this little twist as an opportunity to off-load some very large chunks of overhead and concentrate on what they've always been great at - making copies of copiers. Tell me which manufacturer wouldn't rather deliver devices to end users directly, collect their profit then wait for the next order. No MDF, no channel contention, just boxes moving all over the world.
Things that make you go, "hmmmmm", eh?
Call it an unseen plot-line, call it a secular shift you did not see coming, Call it DIY_MPS.
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