Management Information is a crucial part of key decision making, attribution reporting and is great for analysing trends and forecasting for the future.

It’s possible that you currently disregard printing data and don’t really think of it as anything more than how many people have printed in the business, which departments have the highest print costs and what the overall cost of print is.

Depending on the managed print service level that you’re looking for, you may be happy to agree on the service and let the MPS provider continually optimise your solution in the background.

However, if you or someone in the company is looking for slightly more involvement in the decision making process and reporting of print data, then management information is key.

Here are 10 questions to ask about management information in a request for proposal for managed print services (MPS):

1. In what form do you provide management information? Please explain why.  
   
   
2. Do you offer any software or web based platforms that allow me to access live management information on demand? If so, how?
   
   
3. Does the platform allow for ‘what if’ data modelling to visualise the impact of possible changes to your solution?
   
   
4. Does the platform allow you to drill down by department or user? If so, how?
   
   
5. What data does the platform allow you to visualise?
   
   
6. Does the platform allow you to identify and analyse trends in paper usage? If yes, how?
   
   
7. Please confirm if your management information contains reporting on volumes.
   
   
8. Please confirm if your management information contains reporting on print type (mono, dual sided, applications used to print from, etc).
   
   
9. Please confirm if your management information contains reporting on print volumes by department.
   
   
10. Please confirm if your management information contains reporting on print volumes by user.

If nothing else, the information provided by management information over the duration of an MPS contract will help your company to check that the MPS provider is on track to provide the benefits and ROI agreed at the start of the project.

It also means your company can track cost reductions, environmental savings, productivity gains and uptime throughout the duration of the contract.

Other information you can expect to see from in-depth management information and reporting includes:

• Allocated costs by department, location and customer
• Quantified benefits such as trees saved, carbon footprint reduction and cost savings
• Use insights that can help to make decisions based around process optimisation

If you need certain information to report back to the organisation, and to ensure ROI on any MPS contract, then you need to make sure the MPS provider is willing to provide this information. The questions above will help with this.

Looking for more information on what to include in an MPS RFP? Download the Template: How to Write an Invitation To Tender for Managed Print Services - A template of questions to ask in your next RFP