MSPmentor

At the Managed Print Services Conference in Orlando, Fla., this week, GreenPrint promoted three core pieces of software that may allow VARs and managed services providers to more effectively offer managed print services. Here’s the background.

If you’re an MSP looking to add MPS services — but don’t want to make deep infrastructure investments — you can partner with GreenPrint, according to George Duffield, director of sales for the Eastern Region. Duffield laid out the three key software pieces that GreenPrint offers.

• Analytics
• Advisor
• preView+

Of the three, Analytics offers the core software that is likely part of any managed print service. Analytics is a silent agent that is pushed to the desktop computers in the company and monitors user behavior about printing. Data collected is on both local and network print devices over a period of about one to two weeks, and offers a spectrum about employee printing habits.

“This is an easy way to add another layer to [MSP] offerings. They already control the desktops, so pushing out [the agent is easy.]” Once the Analytics package is deployed, it can show a partner or customer potential changes to generate ROI.

Next, Advisor gives a breakdown of which printers are likely more efficient to printing a document, using a simple traffic light motif. Red means more expensive, green means cheapest. These colors are based on a few factors, but mainly the price of ink.

If you want the whole shebang, there’s preView+. A piece of client-side software interacts with the spooler, preView+ allows a user complete control over a document after clicking “File-Print.” At-a-glance thumbnails are offered of each page to be printed, and a user can decide to print certain pages in black and white, print certain pages with or without images, select certain text or image on certain pages to print, or not, and more. The total amount of money that the print would cost the company (along with some other ‘green’ details like trees and carbon saved) is displayed to the user, and the user can make decisions on how to reduce the cost of a printed item. Duffield said GreenPrint’s focus is to “engage, educate and empower,” the end-user, with the assistance of channel partners.

GreenPrint offers partner co-branding as well. You can sell the service directly as part of your existing managed services package, and no hardware needs to be deployed. GreenPrint’s software works entirely inside their cloud via a web-portal.

I asked if it was possible for a MSP to host their own GreenPrint cloud. Duffield said that’s not a typical scenario with MSPs. But in situations where solution needs to be inside the firewall (like a bank or hospital,) GreenPrint will discuss alternative approaches.

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