Quick Answer
Managed print services save businesses money by replacing a sprawl of underused devices with a right-sized fleet, automating supplies, and giving leaders real visibility into print volume. Independent research from Quocirca and Gartner shows most companies trim 20 to 40 percent of total print spend in the first year. For a Michigan office, that often means thousands of dollars back in the budget, fewer support tickets, and a more predictable monthly bill.
Why Your Print Costs Are Higher Than You Think
Most owners can quote their lease payment to the dollar. Ask about the full cost of printing across the building and the room goes quiet. That gap is the problem. A managed print program from Kraft Business Systems closes the gap by counting every page, every cartridge, and every service call, then shrinking the bill.
Research from Gartner suggests print can consume up to 3 percent of annual revenue once you add hardware, toner, paper, IT support, and staff time. That number sounds small until you do the math on a $20 million Grand Rapids manufacturer. Three percent is $600,000. Even a modest 25 percent cut on that line is a hiring budget for a junior accountant.
Print also hides labor cost. When a printer jams in accounting, three people walk over, two of them call IT, and the help desk burns 30 minutes on a fix the device should have flagged itself. Multiply across a year and the soft cost rivals the hard one.
Estimated annual print-related cost per office employee, based on Gartner research cited across industry analyses. I believe this figure is widely repeated; you should verify it against your own page counts.
Managed Print Services in Plain English
Managed print services, or MPS, is a program where a single provider takes responsibility for your office print environment. So multifunction printers, copiers, scanners, and fax-capable devices come under one roof. And one bill.
The MPS provider audits your current fleet, recommends right-sized replacements, ships toner automatically, dispatches techs for repairs, and reports on usage every month. Buying ink at retail stops. Calling four different vendors stops. And you start seeing patterns: which department prints color when it should print mono, which device sits idle, which workflow could go fully digital.
But the heart of MPS is not the hardware. It is the discipline. A good program forces rules about who can print color, what gets stored on a device hard drive, and how long a job sits in a print queue. Those rules turn a chaotic cost center into something a CFO can model.
The Five Pillars of a Real MPS Program
- Assessment: a walk-through of every device, page count, and supply closet to set a baseline.
- Optimization: a fleet plan; right device, right floor, right speed, no orphans.
- Automation: supplies arrive before they run out; service tickets open themselves.
- Security: hard-drive encryption, pull printing, user authentication, and audit logs.
- Reporting: monthly dashboards on cost per page, color ratio, and uptime.
Five Places Managed Print Actually Cuts Cost
Generic “30 percent savings” claims sound great in a brochure. So let us walk through where the money actually comes from. Each one is small on its own; together they explain the headline number.
1. Right-Sized Fleet
Most offices have too many devices and the wrong mix. A common pattern: a desktop inkjet on every fifth desk plus a giant color MFP no one uses. An MPS audit cuts the herd, often by 20 to 40 percent. Fewer devices means fewer leases, fewer service contracts, less toner SKUs to track, and less electricity. Plus less floor space lost to a printer corner.
2. Lower Cost per Page
Desktop inkjets are the most expensive way to print, often $0.10 or more per black page and 30+ cents for color. A workgroup mono laser can land near $0.01 per page. Shifting traffic onto the right device is pure margin. Kraft Business Systems usually models this in the proposal so you can see the swing before you sign.
3. Bulk Toner and Predictive Shipping
Buying a Brother TN-660 at the office supply chain is roughly double the cost of the same cartridge through a fleet contract. And shipping happens before the device runs dry, which kills emergency overnight orders. Smaller, cheaper, calmer.
4. Service Off the Help Desk
Internal IT teams spend a surprising slice of their week on jammed paper trays, driver pushes, and “why is this beige and not white” calls. Pull those off their plate and you free senior engineers for security and cloud work.
5. Behavior Change
Pull printing (release at the device with a badge or code) cuts waste 10 to 30 percent on its own. People stop sending pages they never collect. They also think twice about color when a tiny window pops up showing the cost.
Typical first-year reduction in total print spend after a structured MPS program, per Quocirca Global Print 2025 research. Treat as a range; outcomes vary by current fleet maturity.
Unmanaged Print vs. Managed Print
Here is what the same Michigan office looks like before and after, using rough but realistic numbers for a 75-employee professional services firm. Numbers are illustrative; your audit will produce the real picture.
| Category | Unmanaged | Managed (Kraft MPS) |
|---|---|---|
| Devices in service | 22 (mix of inkjet, laser, MFP) | 9 right-sized MFPs and lasers |
| Cost per mono page | $0.04 to $0.08 blended | $0.012 to $0.015 |
| Cost per color page | $0.16 to $0.30 | $0.06 to $0.09 |
| Toner buying | Retail, reactive, often urgent | Auto-shipped, contract pricing |
| Service calls | Multiple vendors, hourly rates | Single vendor, included |
| IT time on printer issues | ~6 hours per week | Under 1 hour per week |
| Annual print spend | ~$58,000 | ~$36,000 |
| Visibility | None; surprises at quarter end | Monthly dashboard, per device |
So that is roughly a $22,000 swing on a single mid-sized office. And the soft savings (IT hours, color discipline, fewer emergency runs to Staples) add another layer that rarely shows up in a spreadsheet.
Where the Hidden Money Hides
Direct print cost is only half the story. Soft costs are the rest. They are also the part finance leaders underestimate the most.
Wasted Paper
One widely cited estimate says the average office worker prints 9,000 pages a year and roughly 20 percent are never read. So for a 100-person office, you may be printing 180,000 pages no one looks at. I believe these figures originate from older PaperCut and Lexmark analyses; you should verify against your own logs.
Energy
Old printers idle hot. New MFPs sleep within seconds and wake within seconds. Fleet consolidation also drops total wattage. A meaningful, if quiet, win.
Shadow Spend
Departments buy their own toner, their own paper, sometimes their own desktop printer from Amazon. Shadow spend never hits the central print budget but it still hits the P&L. MPS centralizes everything; you finally see the full picture.
Risk and Compliance
An unsecured MFP can store images of every job on its hard drive. For HIPAA, CJIS, or HITECH-covered organizations, that is a real risk. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency lists printers among its enterprise asset categories worth hardening. A managed program enforces drive encryption, secure release, and decommission wiping.
Cost Per Page, Tiered Contracts, and What to Avoid
Most MPS contracts are billed on a cost-per-page (CPP) basis. You agree to a rate for mono and a rate for color. Hardware, toner, parts, and service are bundled in. Paper is usually still yours. The contract has a monthly minimum that maps to your historical volume.
Good contracts include: clear CPP, no surprise overage formulas, posted response-time service-level agreements, scheduled fleet reviews, and an exit clause. Bad contracts hide overage fees in fine print, lock you into a 60-month equipment lease with no swap right, and skip reporting entirely.
What to Watch For in a Proposal
- The CPP rate must be all-in: toner, parts, labor, and shipping.
- Color and mono CPP should be quoted separately and clearly.
- The monthly minimum should match your actual recent volume, not a padded number.
- Service-level agreements should specify response time in hours, not vague language.
- The contract should allow device swaps as needs change.
- Ask for sample monthly reports; if the provider cannot show one, walk away.
Average cut in print-related operational costs reported by Konica Minolta and other major OEM-backed MPS programs. Verify against vendor case studies in your industry before assuming the same.
Productivity and Security Gains You Did Not Budget For
Cost savings are the headline. But productivity and security gains usually surprise leaders even more. Both compound over years.
Productivity
Workflows often die at the printer. A scan that should land in a SharePoint folder gets emailed to a personal inbox and then forwarded around. With MPS we configure scan-to-folder, OCR, and cloud routing on every device. The same scan now lands in the right place, indexed, every time. Add document management on top and entire AR, AP, or HR processes shorten by days.
Security
Networked MFPs are full computers. They have memory, storage, and an operating system. Unpatched, they are an easy target. The National Institute of Standards and Technology offers guidance on hardening multifunction devices and a real MPS program puts those guidelines into practice: firmware updates, certificate-based authentication, secure release, and end-of-life wipe certificates.
Sustainability
Most boards now ask about environmental, social, and governance reporting. MPS feeds the story. Recycled cartridges, energy-efficient devices, and lower paper volume produce a measurable footprint reduction.
What Michigan Businesses Get from a Local MPS Partner
National providers ship boxes. A local Michigan partner sends a technician. That difference matters when a hospital in Grand Rapids needs a unit back online before the next shift, or when a Traverse City accounting firm hits week one of tax season with a jammed MFP.
Kraft Business Systems is headquartered in Caledonia with offices serving Grand Rapids, Detroit, Lansing, Kalamazoo, Traverse City, and Southfield. So our average drive time to a customer site is short. Parts inventory is local. Loaner devices are local. And our service techs know the difference between a manufacturing floor in Wyoming and a law office on Monroe Center.
Industries We See Often in West Michigan
- Healthcare: high-volume mono printing, HIPAA-grade secure release, and EHR integration.
- Manufacturing: durable MFPs for shop floors, label printing, and routing to MES systems.
- Legal: color-sensitive printing, scan-to-case, and ironclad audit trails.
- Financial services: SOX-aware controls and encrypted scan-to-email.
- Government and education: CJIS and FERPA alignment, plus right-sized lab printers.
Common Pitfalls in a Managed Print Program
MPS is not magic. A bad program can lock you into the wrong hardware, slow you down, or just shift the bill from one column to another. So go in clear-eyed.
Pitfall 1: Buying a Bigger Fleet “Just in Case”
Some providers oversize devices to pad the lease. A good audit shows current and projected volume; the fleet should fit.
Pitfall 2: Skipping the Behavior Change Step
If you upgrade hardware but never configure pull printing, color rules, or scan workflows, savings will be modest. The tech alone is only half the program.
Pitfall 3: Missing the IT Handoff
If the provider cannot deploy print drivers, integrate with Active Directory, or work with your single sign-on, your IT team inherits a mess. Ask for references on similar deployments.
Pitfall 4: Ignoring Security on Day One
Pull printing, encrypted drives, and decommission certificates should be in the proposal. Bolting them on later is harder and more expensive.
Pitfall 5: No Off-Ramp
If the contract has no exit clause, no swap right, and no benchmark review, you will pay the same price for an aging fleet. So negotiate flexibility upfront.
How Kraft Business Systems Builds Your Managed Print Program
Fleet Assessment
We walk every floor, log every device, and capture 90 days of meter reads to set an accurate baseline.
Right-Size Plan
You get a device map: model, location, monthly volume target, color policy, and projected savings.
Secure Deployment
Devices ship configured with pull printing, AD integration, encrypted storage, and current firmware.
Automated Supplies
Toner ships before it runs out; no panic orders, no closet full of dead cartridges.
Local Service
Michigan-based technicians, fast response, parts on the truck for common breakdowns.
Monthly Reporting
You see cost per page, color ratio, top users, and uptime; we meet quarterly to tune.
And if you need broader help, our managed IT services and cybersecurity practice wrap around the print program so the whole environment stays patched, monitored, and audit-ready.
Your First 90 Days With Managed Print
A reasonable rollout fits inside a quarter. Here is what it looks like at most Kraft clients.
Days 1 to 14: Audit
We collect meter reads from every device, map locations, talk to power users, and capture the current spend (including shadow buys). Output: a baseline report with current cost per page.
Days 15 to 30: Plan
You approve a proposed fleet map. We schedule deliveries, train champions, and prepare comms.
Days 31 to 60: Deploy
Devices ship and install, secure release goes live, old units leave with a wipe certificate, and end users get a 20-minute training session.
Days 61 to 90: Tune
We watch the dashboard, find the surprises, and adjust. Color policies tighten, scan workflows expand, and the first monthly report goes out. By day 90 the new cost per page is real and verifiable.
Frequently Asked Questions About Managed Print
How much can managed print services really save my business?
Most companies see a 20 to 40 percent reduction in total print spend within the first year, per Quocirca and Gartner research. Savings depend on how chaotic your starting point is. A fleet of mismatched inkjets typically shows the biggest gains; a tightly run laser fleet sees a smaller but still meaningful cut.
Is managed print only for big companies?
No. Plenty of value comes at the 20 to 100 employee range. A small Michigan firm with five printers and one toner closet often saves a higher percentage than a 500-person enterprise simply because the starting fleet is so unoptimized.
What happens to my existing printers?
Kraft Business Systems audits them first. Sometimes we keep devices that still earn their keep and wrap them into the contract. Sometimes we recommend retirement. Old units leave with a secure wipe certificate so nothing sensitive walks out the door.
How is cost per page calculated?
CPP combines toner, parts, labor, and shipping into a single rate per printed page; mono and color quoted separately. Paper is usually billed separately. The rate is locked for the contract term and trues up against your actual meter reads.
Will my staff have to learn new workflows?
A little. Pull printing means walking to the device and tapping a badge or entering a code. So it takes about a day to get used to. Scan-to-folder and scan-to-email work the way they always did, just faster and more reliable.
What about color printing controls?
Color rules are flexible. Common setups include all-color for marketing, mono-default for accounting with a one-click override, and audit logs across the board. Many clients cut color volume 30 percent in month one just by adding the prompt.
How long does a typical MPS contract run?
36 to 60 months is common because device leases follow that cycle. Look for an exit clause, an annual swap right, and a benchmark review so you can adjust as the business grows or shrinks.
Can MPS help with HIPAA, CJIS, or SOX compliance?
Yes. Pull printing, encrypted drives, user authentication, and secure decommission directly map to controls in those frameworks. Kraft Business Systems will document the configuration so your auditor sees a clear control story.
What if my volume drops sharply, say after a layoff or hybrid shift?
A flexible contract allows mid-term right-sizing. Bring it up at the quarterly review. You may move to lower minimums, return a device, or shift more volume to scan-to-folder so paper drops.
Does Kraft Business Systems serve all of Michigan?
Yes. We support Grand Rapids, Detroit, Lansing, Kalamazoo, Traverse City, Southfield, and surrounding markets from local offices and field technicians. Response time targets are set per contract, with most service calls handled the same day.
How fast can we get started?
A baseline audit usually finishes in two weeks. From signed proposal to first new device on the floor is typically 30 to 45 days, depending on hardware availability and how many sites are in scope.
Will MPS replace my IT team?
No, and it should not. MPS handles printers, supplies, and print workflow. Your IT team keeps doing everything else. Most clients tell us their help desk recovers four to six hours a week once printers stop generating tickets.
Ready to See Your Real Print Bill?
Kraft Business Systems can audit your current fleet, model your true cost per page, and show you exactly where managed print would save you money. No obligation, no jargon, just clear numbers.
Call (616) 800-7682
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Kraft Business Systems | 6980 Southbelt Drive, Suite 1, Caledonia, MI 49316
