The quality of consumables within any MPS program is vital to good printer fleet management. The vast majority of customers and dealers care more about cartridge quality when it comes to transactional business, but not so much with MPS programs. Why is this…?
MPS is the best tool for achieving efficiency in managing a printer fleet, but more importantly, it is another way to put toner on a page, and that toner must be of high quality.
MPS is sold to the IT manager or CIO as a service that will reduce workloads, control costs and optimize fleets, where the quality of consumables is not in dispute.
However, the MPS program is implemented without consideration of how it will affect the user experience, who is only looking for trouble-free printing. Poor consumable quality leads to low satisfaction and triggers internal complaints to the helpdesk.
As a result, we have the IT manager liking the MPS concept but not the dissatisfied users, leaving him with two options: go back to transactional purchasing or, if the problem is with one type of consumable, switch to using OEM consumables in the MPS solution.
On the other hand, the distributor’s own profitability is also at stake. When everything is integrated into an MPS program, users go to the supplier at the slightest hint of a problem. Poor consumables quality will increase a reseller’s support costs.
So quality should not be overlooked in the printing industry: there will always be another MPS supplier with the same monitoring software and similar conditions; there will always be someone cheaper and it is impossible to build loyalty through price.
In addition, quality will drive customer loyalty, whether in transactional sales or in an MPS program. In the case of printing consumables, 70% of users buy monochrome cartridges based on quality, not price (90% for color).
In short, consumable manufacturers and suppliers have a responsibility to stand up for quality, which will increase sales, regardless of whether they sell software, consumables and services on demand or in an MPS program.
Nubeprint contains 3 premium apps in its “Profitability + Coverage” package, which enable state-of-the-art cost control aimed at all service providers or MPS customers who need to audit the actual print yield of the cartridges used:
– The “Profitability” app calculates the profitability per printer, measured in terms of cost savings compared to expected costs.
– The “Actual Coverage” app shows the lifetime of each cartridge and calculates actual coverage, pages printed, pages wasted and more (using filters, results can be grouped and displayed by cartridge, by SKU or by device serial number).
– The “Actual Yield” app calculates the yield of each SKU and allows the service provider or customer to audit the printability of the cartridges they purchase.
* For accuracy reasons, these premium apps require 4 months of history to complete their data.
