HP Announces Payback Guarantee for Managed Print Services

Technology giant Hewlett-Packard introduced two offerings the company said would help enterprises cut printing costs, the HP Printing Payback Guarantee and the HP Page Plan. The payback guarantee states if qualified enterprise customers do not reach their projected savings goals within 12 months of implementation of HP Managed Print Services (MPS), HP will make up the difference. The page plan is a bundled solution managed by the customer to provide a scalable, flexible way to take greater control of a company’s imaging and printing environment.

For new, qualified MPS customers, HP will complete an assessment of a company’s imaging and printing environment and calculate an overall printing cost savings. One year after a customer’s implementation, HP will complete a second assessment and if customers haven’t saved the projected costs, HP will make up the difference. Additionally, as part of the presales assessment, HP is offering tools and services from its Eco Solutions printing practice to help customers save paper and printer energy usage to reduce costs and environmental impact.

Ken Weilerstein, vice president of research for print markets for research firm Gartner, said the economic recession presents a golden opportunity to manage office printing.

“Organizations that fail to rein in their office printing risk seeing costs spiral higher,” he said. “Even recently optimized printer fleets may slip out of alignment with the organization’s true needs as the economy reduces the work force and results in changes to roles and processes.”

These solutions, planned to be available in September, include HP Access Control Secure Pull Printing with PIN Authentication and HP Access Control Job Accounting. AIB, one of Ireland’s leading financial institution, has been engaged in a new approach to printing by managing its printing environment through HP MPS.

“The HP MPS solution has allowed AIB to deliver improved service quality, reduced cost and mitigated risk, in line with AIB Operational Excellence Agenda. The results were achieved through the introduction of fewer devices, using the latest HP technology, through the use of duplex printing, auto deletion and linking staff ID cards to initiate and track print jobs,” said AIB’s head of managed services Harry Troute. “An AIB in-house developed Management Information System (MIS) uses data from the HP MPS solution to deliver up-to-date cost and usage information via the intranet.”

According to research firm IDC, Global enterprise companies will spend more than $172 billion on printing this year. A similar report by All Associates Research found in a typical enterprise printing environment, for every dollar spent on hard costs, another $9 is spent managing the printed documents over their life cycles.

“In today’s tough economic times, companies want a partner who understands their business and is willing to share the risks,” said HP’s senior vice president of worldwide sales and services for the imaging and printing group Bruce Dahlgren. “It may seem counterintuitive that a printing company like HP wants to help customers print more efficiently but that’s exactly our focus and intent – to help our customers print more responsibly and intelligently.”