By: The Week in Imaging

The convergence of managed services and managed print services is going to be significant…huge for this industry in 2012. It’s a trend Photizo identified in 2010 and we are now seeing it come to fruition. There is a critical mass building in terms of programs and an ecosystem developing around this, most recently with announcements like Agiliant and Level Platforms. This will raise the bar for those currently playing in the MPS, making this space very interesting and competitive.

This will also be the year that separates those that can from those that can’t. There are firms that have been doing MPS for awhile, excelling at it. They are starting to take the leap into offering Stage 4 business process outsourcing, document workflow management—things that are transformative to their customers beyond just managing the fleet. As the first stages of MPS become commoditized, more and more vendors are striving to advance to these “stickier” opportunities. Those that can make this transformation, not just manage the fleet, but go beyond that and impact the customer’s business model, are going to put huge pressure on everybody else to go all in. It is going to be the critical year for those who haven’t and are still sitting on the fence.. They will feel the pressure intensify.