Most organizations have no idea what they spend on printing.
Not because the information doesn’t exist, but because it’s buried in departmental budgets, maintenance contracts, supply orders, and IT support tickets. No line item somewhere says “printing costs.” So the total is never scrutinized, never questioned, never controlled.
Gartner estimates printing expenditures to be 1-3% of annual sales for most firms — with up to 15% of the spend being waste. That’s $150,000 in preventable printing costs for a $10 million a year corporation.
This is precisely the problem managed print services exist to tackle. Not by trimming the printing—but by knowing the whole print environment, removing inefficiencies, and establishing a managed system that costs less and performs better than what most firms are running today.
The core insight behind managed print services is simple: you cannot control what you cannot measure. Most organizations are spending significant budget on printing without a clear picture of where it goes or how much is wasted.
Table of Contents
1. What Are Managed Print Services?
2. Where Office Printing Costs Actually Come From
3. Managed Print Services Benefits: What Changes and By How Much
4. What Is Print Management Software?
5. MPS vs. Self-Managing Your Print Environment
6. How NextPage Delivers Managed Print Solutions in Kansas City
1. What Are Managed Print Services?
Managed print services (MPS) simplify your whole print environment—hardware, consumables, maintenance, security and output—with centralized invoicing and service-level accountability. No more vendor management or reacting to breakdowns.
A managed print services company starts with the optimization of your print operations across five areas:
- Assessment: Evaluating workflows, device usage, and output volume to uncover cost control and efficiency opportunities.
- Fleet Standardization: Reducing reliance on distributed copiers and standardizing the device fleet to consolidate supply and maintenance costs.
- Automated Supply Management: Replenishing supplies automatically through proactive monitoring, so teams never stall waiting on critical supplies.
- Proactive Maintenance: Monitoring device health and managing maintenance remotely, reducing manual tasks and keeping teams productive.
- Security and Compliance: Secure print solutions, HIPAA-ready processes, and data protection protocols safeguarding sensitive documents.
The result is a streamlined print environment that helps your organization work smarter, faster, and more efficiently.
Managed print services is not simply about decreasing costs on an existing problematic system. It’s a replacement of that system with one that is intended to work — and then actively maintained to keep operating.
2. Where Office Printing Costs Actually Come From
Most firms don’t know how much they’re really spending on print since the costs are scattered. To understand where managed print services save money, you have to know where the money is going now.
| Cost Category | What It Includes | Why It Is Often Underestimated |
| Device costs | Purchase, lease, depreciation | Multiple contracts across departments, no central view |
| Consumables | Toner, ink, paper, drums | Ordered ad hoc, rarely tracked against output volume |
| Maintenance and repair | Service calls, parts, labour | Billed separately, absorbed into IT or facilities budgets |
| IT support time | Help desk, driver installs, connectivity | Tracked as IT cost, not print cost |
| Energy consumption | Idle device power draw | Never attributed to printing |
| Waste and overprinting | Uncollected jobs, duplicate output | Invisible without print tracking software |
Across all categories, most organizsations discover that their actual print expense is 20-30% more than their internal estimates. The gap isn’t fraud — it’s fragmentation. Costing that would normally be aggregated is being tracked independently. No one owns the total.
Get a Print Environment Assessment from NextPage →
3. Managed Print Services Benefits: What Changes and By How Much
The most common managed print services benefits cited by enterprises are cost reduction, predictability, security improvement, and productivity increases. Each one derives from putting the print environment under active management.
Cost Reduction
IDC and Quocirca industry data consistently demonstrates that companies using MPS can cut their print related costs by 20-30%. Savings are achieved on three fronts: device fleet rationalization, consumables consolidation, and waste reduction through output tracking and user accountability.
Predictable, Consolidated Billing
One of the most predictable managed print services benefits is that a single predictable monthly expense replaces the haphazard, fluctuating print spend. Devices, supplies, maintenance and support are all bundled into one service agreement – minimizing the budget surprises of unscheduled repair calls and emergency supply orders.
Security and Compliance
Unmanaged printers are a major overlooked cyber vulnerability—unsecured devices and abandoned output trays create compliance risks for regulated industries. A managed print partner should address this with secure print release, encrypted device storage, audit trails, and HIPAA-ready data protection protocols.
Brand and Quality Consistency
NextPage’s managed print solutions leverage G7 color management techniques to assure consistent, brand-accurate output from every device in the fleet – a quality benchmark for enterprises creating marketing materials or client-facing documents in-house.
Reduced IT and Administrative Burden
MPS shifts the maintenance of the print infrastructure—driver installs, connectivity, supply ordering, vendor coordination—to the provider, who proactively monitors, automates supply management and provides a single helpdesk contact for all print issues.
The firms that profit the most from managed print services are not the ones with the largest print environments. They are the ones with the most fragmented and least visible print expenditures. Waste is hiding in fragmentation.
4. What Is Print Management Software?
Managed print services are made measurable and controllable by the technological layer, print management software. It collects data for every print job — who printed what, when, on what device and at what cost — and leverages that data to enforce policies, manage expenses and find chances for improvement.
Core functions:
- Output tracking: All jobs recorded by user, device, document type, color vs. monochrome and page count.
- Cost allocation: Print costs charged to department, cost center or project for appropriate internal reporting.
- Policy enforcement: Rules are automatically enforced Default to duplex Limit color Require PIN for sensitive documents
- Secure pull printing: Jobs are held in the queue until the user authenticates at the device, removing uncollected output.
- Device monitoring: Real-time toner levels, fault circumstances and consumption rates enable preventative maintenance before issues occur.
MPS is a service agreement with no visibility, no print management software. It’s the software that transforms a print fleet into a managed, measured infrastructure.
Talk to NextPage About Print Management Software →
5. MPS vs. Self-Managing Your Print Environment
The alternative option to managed print services is self-management. Most organizations underestimate the true cost of managing print internally. The costs are concealed and spread out thus self-management seems like the cheaper alternative to most firms. In actuality it is nearly always more expensive.
However, unmanaged printers represent a major, overlooked cyber vulnerability. Unsecured network devices, unmonitored storage, and sensitive documents left sitting in output trays create severe compliance risks—especially for healthcare, financial, and other regulated industries.
| Factor | Self-Managed Print Environment | Managed Print Services (MPS) |
| Cost visibility | Fragmented across budgets | Consolidated, single monthly cost |
| Device fleet | Reactive (replaced when broken) | Proactively right-sized to actual demand |
| Supplies | Ad hoc ordering, variable cost | Automated, volume-priced, predictable |
| Maintenance | Reactive (called when needed) | Proactive monitoring, scheduled service |
| Security | Untracked output, unsecured devices | Secure pull printing, HIPAA-ready processes |
| IT burden | Absorbed by internal team | Transferred to MPS provider |
| Color consistency | Device-dependent, variable | G7 managed, brand-accurate output and rules-based color cost control. |
Switching to MPS is not a loss of control, it is a step from reactionary piecemeal management to forward-thinking unified management. Organizations that make the switch always find that the managed environment performs better and costs less than what they were running before.
6. How NextPage Delivers Managed Print Solutions in Kansas City
NextPage’s managed print solutions cover the complete range of MPS:
- Print environment assessment: Full audit of current devices, workflows and output volumes to benchmark and discover optimization potential
- Cost control and predictable pricing: Bundle consumables, maintenance and supply costs into one service agreement.
- Print consolidation: Fewer scattered copiers, unifying the device fleet to reduce redundancy.
- Compliance and security: HIPAA-ready processes and secure document handling for regulated companies.
For Kansas City firms considering a managed print services company – or any business seeking to get print expenditures under control – NextPage delivers the assessment, the infrastructure.
Request a Managed Print Services Assessment from NextPage →
7. Frequently Asked Questions
What are managed print services?
Managed print services (MPS) is a vendor-managed service that assumes responsibility for an organization’s whole print environment – devices, supply, maintenance and cost management – under one service agreement. This starts with an assessment of the print environment and moves from a disjointed reactive print management to a consolidated actively controlled solution.
How much can managed print services reduce printing costs?
IDC and Quocirca estimate that managed print services generally cut print-related costs by 20–30%. Savings are achieved through device fleet optimization, consolidation of consumables and waste reduction via output tracking.
What are the main managed print services benefits?
Managed print services offer 20-30% cost reduction, predictable consolidated billing, enhanced security with HIPAA-ready procedures, brand-consistent output with G7 color management, and decreased IT burden through proactive monitoring and automated supply management.
What is print management software and why does it matter?
Print management software analyzes every print job by user, device and cost, enforces output policies, provides secure pull printing and monitors device status in real-time. A managed print software needs it to know what is being printed, by whom and at what cost.
What does a managed print services company do?
A managed print services company examines the print environment, right-sizes the device fleet, installs print management software, proactively controls supplies and maintenance, and provides unified invoicing and SLA responsibility.
Is managed print services right for small businesses or only large enterprises?
Managed print services are applicable for any organization with fragmented or untracked print costs – which is most enterprises, regardless of size. This advantage is not limited to companies, but also applies to smaller organizations that typically lack the internal capacity to proactively manage print infrastructure.
Do we need to replace all our existing printers to implement managed print services?
No. NextPage’s managed print services work with your existing hardware. The process starts with an assessment to identify which devices to retain, consolidate, or replace based on actual usage — not a blanket equipment swap.
