Managed Print Solution

[AccessCreative]

Hi.

 

I'm currently in the process of looking for a managed print solution for 8 colleges around the UK.

 

I've been through the managed print process a few times over the years, but nothing on this scale. I was wondering if anyone can recommend a company for me to partner with, or a particular make/model of MFD that they are happy with? I'm open to all suggestions except Danwood

 

Thanks.

[djm968]

Sharp + PaperCut

Sharp Business Systems UK Plc

Northern House

Moor Knoll Lane

East Ardsley

Wakefield,

WF3 2EE

01924 823455

[christhetech]

I feel your pain!

I had the unenviable task a number of years ago of sourcing a managed print service for a local authority. It all sounded simple enough and we kicked off the project with a fact finding exercise to ascertain just how many printers they actually had, since nobody knew for sure. It turned out that they had a lot ore than they realised, as the whole of Health and Social Care had their own individual desktop printers on every single desk in every office that they occupied and that accounted for just over 1,000 printers on it's own.

Once I had a handle on the number of printers that we would be looking to remove, I had a better idea of how much printing the council were actually doing and we started a drive to reduce the amount of printing that each individual was producing, campaigns on the council intranet, posters in each office, cascading the message from Senior Council staff down the tree etc.

The part that I wasn't made aware of initially, was the funding stream. I found out when I started to approach suppliers for pricing that the IT director had already successfully submitted a bid for Capital funding, without speaking to me and getting information about the different types of managed services available, costings etc. So...

...I'm now stuck with around £1.5m of Capital Budget to replace the council's entire printing fleet with nice shiny new MFDs on a managed print service, and a deadline. The amount that the council had put up was quite fair I thought, and £1.5m will get a pretty decent solution. WRONG!

The problem that I had was that every vendor that I approached wanted to give me the devices on a five year lease, but because of the conditions of the Capital funding I had, the council HAD TO OWN THE DEVICES OUTRIGHT! So here I am, armed with my purchase order book and a list of requirements, with over a million pounds to hand over to some lucky sod, and nobody wanted to take it off me.

In the end, the only vendor that was prepared to play ball with me was Xerox, and even then I had to beg them to take the council's money off me. We ended up with a sort of hybrid MPS, where the council were stumping up the MPS costs every quarter, but getting only half the benefits. Because they owned the devices outright, they only received a basic warranty with them. Had they leased the devices, as I had suggested, maintenance of the devices would have been the vendor's problem throughout the lease period, but because they owned them, as soon as the initial warranty period was up, they were liable for the cost of all repairs.

 

I don't know what OKI are like, but I know that one of our existing suppliers has recently partnered with OKI to offer MPS, as our account manager asked me whether we would consider MPS in the future.

 

If it's done correctly, there are some real benefits to be had from MPS, just don't ever try to purchase the devices outright, as it's an absolute nightmare! The LA that I worked with on the Xerox MPS let me do it my way second time around and once the original 5 year deal was up. The old IT director had retired and had been replaced with somebody with a modicum of common sense, who asked for the information first and they now have LEASED Xerox devices on a 5 year MPS, with lower "per-click" charges than they were paying previously and no maintenance issues. They are now very happy with MPS.

[Linfit]

Have been very impressed by the Toshiba e2020 MFD machines that were provided as part of our BSF build. They were bought in 2011, are still going, and have been out on corridors and suffered the abuse of teachers all that time with very few issues. I think we have had less than 25 engineer visits (to 7 devices) in all that time. We are looking to replace them now as they are EOL and parts are going to start getting difficult to source, but Toshiba are at the top of the list in contention for the replacements. This is stark contrast to the Ricoh machines in our Repro department, which have never really functioned as advertised and are constantly breaking down. The Ricoh engineer has his own mug he is here so often. Also, Papercut, a really good, well thought out piece of software which has required zero tweaking or fiddling since we installed it in 2013.

[Jamman960]

I’ve Found toshiba machines to be very reliable, our supplier Direct-Tec have been faultless, they use their own engineers where they can and Toshiba engineers elsewhere. Getting 5x 5015ac machines installed over half term

[torgo_uk]

We use Konica/Minolta MFD's and some standalone printers, recently changed print management from Inepro/Docupro to PaperCut and it's been a revelation, well worth a closer look

[ADMaster]

+1 for Konica Minolta and Papercut.

We own our devices and have an MPS. We pay per click / page and they supply toner and do all the servicing / repair.

A nearby school is on a leased deal and owe a ton of money on them. Our finance team said we have leased in the past and it isn’t worth it, we always buy now.

[MatthewL]

Sharp kit and PaperCut all the way, if you need printers PaperCut can still be used to manage these too.

[nadeem]

Sharp Kit (and to be fair we use Equitrac)

 

To the poster who had problem buying vs. leasing Sharp had no problem with either, and it didn't impact on the support we received

[HTCPCP]

In edu, I used sharp with Papercut and a local supplier - got the advantage of same day visits for most fixes and the MD used to pop in for a coffee every now and then. Worked really well, and we got a great price on the kit (even had a couple of smaller printers from them (used) on a per page print cost for some supported schools or for specific staff offices). Might be worth talking to local schools to see who they use.

 

Now, we have Konica Minolta straight up, and the printers are fine. They aren't as flashy as the Sharps (and imo not quite as easy to use) but they do the job, and are at a good price.

[gerardsweeney]

We implemented Canon SecurePrint on about half of our High Schools and about a third of our Primary schools (quite the pilot project!)

All existing printers previously owned by the schools were taken away (and quickly nabbed by other schools).

Staff map to a secureprint queue where they need to use a token to retrieve their print job from any device in the school.

Pupils still use a non secure (direct) print to a device based on the room they're in.

 

It seems to work pretty well. Same/next day callout for any technical issues.

Some qualms - I'd originally requested the MFDs be setup with proper host names. That wasn't done because it apparently wasn't in the spec - sigh.

Troubleshooting them is a pain, in that quite literally all we can do is PING them. We've not been given any admin credentials for the devices because they're not ours.

[gerardsweeney]

The SecurePrint strategy was well above my paygrade, I'm afraid

(I'm just the desktop monkey that has to try to get PCs to talk to the shiny toys)

 

I'd dabbled with the free version of PaperCut many moons ago when we had our own printers. It looked more than decent.

Who knows - maybe it'll be implemented for the next phase of the printer migration?

[PotNoodleTech]

Ricoh and papercut here. Whatever hardware you get, make sure you get papercut. So good.

[Stevecee]

HI We're just looking at this again, we entered into new leases for 3 copiers in advance of our moving to a new school. Then after our move another 4, and as things d=bedded in a further 2. The original 3 are due for renewal next year so we're starting to look at the way forward.

 

Our current MFDs are Ricoh and we use PaperCut, follow me queues together with embedded software on the copiers. Our copying costs are still huge over £30k so we want to get best value. The current costs would require going our to tender but have been looking at some the Frameworks out there - has anyone had any experience of these? it seems as though you go directly to the manufacturers so that opens up the variants about what make etc.

 

Lastly we are an Apple school so print from Macs and iPads!

 

Suggestions please

Steve

[junz]

In relation to Stevecee message would anyone be willing to share how much they spend on printing so we can maybe compare and see if we are overspending:

 

I will go first

 

Provider: XMA

Software Papercut

Printers Status: Owned

 

Number of printers: 3 MFP & 2 Laser Printers

Cost to print in Black MFP 0.035 & 0.0099 on Laser Printers

Cost to print in color: MFP 3.5P & 0.049 on Laser printers

Number of pupils: 600

Number of staff: 65

Cost of printing yearly:£14000

Other 1:1 Chromebook School

Edited October 26, 2018 by junz

[Stevecee]

I probably need to stress that as a special school a lot of our evidence is collated in the form of colour photographs rather than showing writing in books etc. Although I still feel there is a way to go in reducing the costs there is only so much that is possible.

 

Steve

[Big_Ted]

you should know papercut can't track 3 tier billing, it is one of those things that sees the odd request but it never stood out. I don't think 3 tier as an option is anything new i first ran into it via Xerox:

https://atyourservice.blogs.xerox.com/2012/04/06/xerox-presents-a-new-colorqube/#.WWdMJ1VKWUk in 2012.

Also, 3 tier is not always a money saver have a look here:

https://theconnectedcopier.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/the-problem-with-the-xerox-colorcube-pricing-model/ and here https://www.leppert.com/office-document-strategies-blog/bid/80067/Colour-Print-or-Copy-for-2-Cents-Per-Page-Kyocera-MFP-3-Tier-Pricing

@lucy FollowMe Print is just a generic term now (much to ringdales annoyance i suspect) papercut call this find-me printing. Plus, postscript is not always a default option on a printer and can be a charged for extra. plus HP are one of the fastest growing providers and are well on the way to their targets, their recent purchase of suppliers has probably helped with this.

@Stevecee what ipad issues do you have? is the orientation anything to do with papercut or just the way the ipad works? Have you looked at using mobility print from papercut? The reseller will be backed by a disti (what papercut call an ASC) so you can be safe in picking a reseller.

[AlanPartridgeAhaa]

For the love of God don't even consider Uniflow as your print software if you go with Canon machines. Stick with Papercut as suggested numerous times elsewhere. We jumped ship away from Uniflow at the first opportunity, such a fragile and complicated software. Edited October 27, 2018 by AlanPartridgeAhaa

[mrbios]

For the love of God don't even consider Uniflow as your print software if you go with Canon machines. Stick with Papercut as suggested numerous times elsewhere. We jumped ship away from Uniflow at the first opportunity, such a fragile and complicated software.

 

I 100% second this. I've not looked back since moving from uniflow to papercut a year ago.

[Stevecee]

@Stevecee what ipad issues do you have? is the orientation anything to do with papercut or just the way the ipad works? Have you looked at using mobility print from papercut? The reseller will be backed by a disti (what papercut call an ASC) so you can be safe in picking a reseller.

 

We have 2 issues really and am not able to roll out mobile print yet.

 

Issue 1 (happens randomly) users print out an A4 page and the printer picks up a different page size and prints it out in a small part of the page or tiles it out over 4, there is a known issue about this. The app concerned do not have the option to set a page size in the print dialogue ie photos.

 

Issue 2 Try to print a job that is in landscape and it will print it full size but impose that image on a portrait page missing off the LH side of the print and having the top of the page clear (basically not turning the page round). Funny thing though if you trace the print job to the PaperCut server and find the pdf file it sends to print everything is OK there, if you print this then it prints out OK.

 

PaperCut are aware and we are waiting to hear back.

 

So my feelings are that whilst we do need to look (at least at other supplier and get he best price I do need to find someone with the Mac experience to help us as we move forward.

 

Steve

[Big_Ted]

Hi Steve,

 

Sounds like you are having some fun. If one problem is a known issue and the other being worked on by papercut then it sounds like problems with the code, at that stage suppliers would not be able to help