A guide to simplifying enterprise print management with MPS

For many enterprise IT teams, managing printers is a daily struggle they could do without. When you include challenges such as managing printers across multiple sites/locations, regulatory compliance, diverse user requirements and integration with other systems, the complexity adds up.

But complexity doesn’t have to mean chaos.

In this guide, you’ll find the five essential steps to help IT leaders bring simplicity, consistency, and control to their print environment with managed print services.

1. Align your printer management strategy with business and IT goals

Simplified printer management starts with clarity. Before deploying devices or selecting vendors, identify how your current print infrastructure supports (or hinders) your wider business goals – from digital transformation and cost reduction to sustainability and compliance targets. Then define where you’re looking to improve performance.

Key actions:

• Map print services to business-critical workflows (e.g. invoicing, legal, HR, logistics)
• Identify key integrations (ERP, DMS, CRM)
• Understand how printing supports hybrid, mobile working or multi-site policies

This upfront assessment ensures MPS becomes a value-driving component of your IT ecosystem, not a disconnected utility.

For help with assessing your current print infrastructure, book a consultation with one of our experts here.

2. Centralise print management for multiple sites

Whether it’s multiple offices, warehouses, branches or equipping teams to work from home, business print infrastructures often extend beyond a single location. Managing print across multiple sites can introduce complexity when it comes to different device needs, user volumes, network environments, and how you’ll maintain the visibility you need to monitor and support on a day-to-day basis.

Devices siloed by location can cause headaches in the form of hidden costs, increased security vulnerabilities and unverifiable policy compliance. 

When assessing the right MPS options for your multi-site business, your solution should allow you to:

• Standardise print policies across multiple sites, while tailoring devices to local requirements
• Centrally deploy updates, manage access, and monitor usage
• Automate supplies replenishment and support requests across the full fleet

A well-designed MPS solution simplifies multi-site print management while streamlining your print management process – every location gets what it needs, without IT losing oversight.
We call this balanced deployment, find out more about how it works here. 

3. Optimise your print fleet performance 

Measuring and reporting on ROI can be burdensome enough, but constantly trying to find ways to shift the needle on that number is pretty much impossible for even the most highly-resourced IT teams.

A managed print service should have optimisation at its core. A good MPS solution will make gathering and analysing your print data effortless, while a great managed print services provider will proactively assess this data for you, delivering value-focused suggestions to optimise your print fleet over time.

Things to track and analyse:

• Print volumes/behaviours by user, team, or department
• Colour vs. mono usage
• Idle or underused devices
• Service incidents and uptime metrics

Data insights help you, and your provider, turn printer management into a non-intensive process of continuous improvement – making right-sizing your print fleet  , implementing permissions interventions, and driving cost-saving initiatives simple.

Brother Managed Print Services are built around a three-phase Assessment, Transition and Optimisation process, designed to provide the most effective solution for your business needs now and into the future. 

4. Build security and compliance into every device

Nothing ramps up the complexity of printer management like fending off security threats. Printers are an often-overlooked endpoint that can provide a back-door into an otherwise highly-secured network.

A well-designed managed print service will recognise your need for a robust, evolving, and customised security posture. 

Security best practices to help businesses reduce risk and meet compliance requirements include:

• Follow Me print / pull printing with user authentication (ID badge or PIN)
• Document encryption in transit
• Access controls by user role or department
• Audit trails to support internal and regulatory reporting
• Admin-defined custom workflows for secure documentation processes

Brother devices are designed to make secure printing simple with triple-layer security to protect at a network, device and document level. From automatic intrusion detection to secure communications protocols, your MPS solution comes secure as standard. 

5. Simplify support structures 

Complex printing setups are often guilty of contributing to already comprehensive helpdesk backlogs. But these high-burden, low-value support tasks – from paper jams and new cartridge orders to driver updates and connection problems – needn’t bring your IT support teams to a standstill. 

By centralising support functions, including a dedicated MPS support phoneline, managed print services can proactively tackle print ticket volumes.

Consider vendors who offer:

• Remote print fleet monitoring and proactive maintenance
• Consolidated reporting dashboards
• Bespoke SLAs designed around your specific business requirements
• Same-day response

Users on Brother Managed Print Services are able to resolve 98% of support queries over the phone, as well as using the ‘Request Help’ feature on the device’s touchscreen to immediately flag issues as they arise. 
Free up your IT team to stay focused on the digital initiatives that matter, while users experience a reliable and seamless print service.

Brother Managed Print Services Make Printing Simple 

A scalable, secure and cost-effective printer management strategy can only be built on the foundations of comprehensive assessment, insight-led planning and ongoing support, all backed by the right technology and expertise.

At Brother, our structured Assessment, Transition, and Optimisation approach ensures your print infrastructure is aligned to your business needs and consistently delivers against your requirements. We help enterprises simplify the complex, so you can focus on what matters most.

Learn how Brother MPS Enterprise helps businesses simplify printer management.