MPS Accelerating in Australian Market

MPS Accelerating in Australian Market

By Mitchell Filby, Managing Director, First Rock Consulting

This past year was fantastic  for First Rock Consulting on many fronts. We started the year with a bang in January with the first Managed Print Services Benchmarking report for a leading Australian Financial Services organisation and this has been followed up by at least seven end-customer discovery service programs. With the majority of these having led to phase two and three programs in assisting our clients develop a stronger core competence in MPS. Or in some cases even just to better prepare them in going to market. We have also been very active in assisting a number of OEMs and Channel Partners in a number of areas from strategy, best practices discovery services through to implementation and ongoing management programs.

However the two major highlights were, First Rock Consulting becoming Photizo Preferred Consulting Partner program for Australia and New Zealand, which was launched in April 2011. The second key highlight was being actively involved in the first Asia Pacific MPS conference held in Sydney Australia where we had the opportunity to present Asia Pacific MPS market trends and chairing the CIO round table.

In 2012, we will continue to build on our independent position within the MPS market in Australia and New Zealand. At the same time we will be working closely with both end customers as well as OEMs and channels partners to further develop their business requirements and operational models around the core competence and capabilities of managed print services.

The Australia market is quickly adopting MPS both at the enterprise level and now with an accelerated speed at the SME/SMB level. This level of market maturity will continue to drive increased sales activity from all players involved. End clients will be well positioned and more knowledgeable to take advantage of the benefits that an MPS program can deliver. We also expect more MPS enabled tools to be on offer and new market/industry players entering the Australian market place (both locally and internationally).

Although service rates have been fairly resilient over the last 2 to 3 years in Australia, we do expect increased market share competition to trigger service price reductions in 2012. This will have an obvious impact on both the client side but also on the manufacturer/distributor side.

With Australia moving onto a Carbon Tax on July 1, 2012, Australia Managed Print Services companies should be expected to strengthen their environmental credentials and skills to support end customers environmental measuring & reporting requirements.

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