Kevin Johnstone is business development officer at Itec.

A distribution and reseller channel that resists open partnership models is a major obstacle to the growth of managed print services (MPS) in South Africa. As a result, South African companies are losing out on opportunities to achieve massive efficiencies and significant cost-savings.

MPS is a model where organisations give a chosen supplier full responsibility for the entire print, copy and scan infrastructure, including all services, support, and supplies. They pay for these services on a monthly basis, often paying per printed page.

Not only do many companies enjoy savings of up to 30% of running costs and reduce hardcopy fleet carbon emissions by 60% (source: Photizo Group) in their office automation environments by adopting MPS, they can also better align their print infrastructures with their business needs and boost productivity.

Little wonder that MPS has grown into a multibillion-dollar market. However, SA lags adoption rates in Europe by a good three years, despite the fact that its technology market usually follows the continent quite closely. One of the major reasons that MPS has fallen behind is the way that the local channel is structured. Most print and copier distributors supply only one or two brands of print and copy hardware, and stipulate that their resellers sell only their equipment. They also don’t allow dealers aligned with rival vendors to access spares, parts and equipment from them.

Since the entire MPS model relies on the end-user being able to outsource an entire fleet of equipment from a range of vendors to a single service provider, it is difficult, if not impossible, for any South African print service provider to offer genuine MPS to its client base.

This situation isn’t sustainable in the long-term. End-users want to be able to hand off responsibility for their print infrastructures to a single provider, just as they might in the desktop environment. Value in the print world no longer comes from the hardware, but from commercial models, value-added services and software solutions.

Print brands that are ready to embrace this reality are the ones that will win out, in a market where their customers are looking to focus on their core businesses and partner with best-of-breed service providers for the rest of their needs.