Quocirca Managed Print Services Market, 2021

March 25, 2021
Article, Channel, Managed Print Services

Th acceleration of digitisation initiatives and the rise of cloud computing – prompted significantly by the shift to hybrid working as a result of COVID-19 – have forced MPS providers to rethink their approach. The market has reached a level of maturity, and new revenue opportunities will come from broader engagements that support an organisation’s digital transformation initiatives while reducing cost, minimising risk and boosting sustainability.

Quocirca’s MPS 2021 study reveals that businesses are becoming more demanding of their suppliers across these key areas and prioritising suppliers who can offer broader workplace, collaboration or IT services. Meanwhile, more organisations are set to transition their print infrastructure to the cloud in order to drive greater cost efficiencies and reduce IT burden. Deploying support, security and management for devices used by remote workers will also be a key priority as organisations adapt to the long-term impact of COVID-19 on the workplace.

Key findings:

• MPS leaders are differentiating beyond traditional print services. Xerox continues to lead the group. It has one of the broadest service portfolios across the office and production print environments and deep expertise in business process automation. HP has made strong advances in deepening its security services and solutions portfolio. Lexmark continues to excel, particularly in distributed environments, boosted by its cloud print services offerings.
• A slow recovery of office print volumes. 77% of organisations indicate that paper is fairly or very important to their business, though this has dropped from 87% in 2019. Large organisations and those in the US are more print-dependent than smaller and European counterparts. 50% of respondents reported a decrease in office print volumes since the start of the pandemic. As organisations relinquish reliance on print-based processes, this indicates that a return to pre-pandemic print volumes is unlikely.
• MPS spend growth is slowing. 53% of respondents expect to increase their expenditure on MPS in the coming year. This is a drop from 79% of respondents who planned to increase spend in 2019. The US remains the most positive about MPS spend, with 73% expecting it to increase, although this is still a fall from 84% in 2019.
• MPS is used to support the hybrid workplace. Fully outsourced MPS is already showing its value for the future hybrid workplace. 56% of organisations with fully outsourced MPS have provided printers for remote workers, compared with only 42% of those using a hybrid model. Provisioning printers for home workers combats shadow IT purchasing and allows the organisation to retain control over the print devices accessing its network and data.
• On-line purchasing of home printers has filled MPS provider supply gaps. While 52% indicated that they used their MPS supplier to procure their home printers, 44% indicated that these were purchased online – 10% of which used a B2B online store such as Amazon Business. This highlights the changing nature of B2B purchasing, particularly through the pandemic where speed of purchase and delivery was critical to ensuring remote workers were set up quickly for home working.
• Cloud adoption accelerates. As businesses adjust the shape of their physical estate and adapt to incorporate remote users, cloud-based print management and advanced analytics can play a core role in print environment redesign and deployment. Three quarters of organisations expect to see greater use of cloud print management by 2025.
• MPS as a digital enabler. Organisations continue to see MPS as a key component of digitisation efforts, with 37% saying MPS is very important to digital transformation in their organisation. Organisations have accelerated digital transformation programmes to absorb the impacts of COVID-19, meaning MPS providers should be exploring opportunities to assist with digitising processes and workflows and aiding remote collaboration.

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