X-Com: PraaS - Printing-as-a-Service

On December 27, 2011 the system integrator brings the market the market essentially new service which allows the companies to save up to 30-40% of costs for printings. In brief its essence is as follows: the clients who got up on service in X-Com pay only for actually printed pages. Undertakes all costs for supplies, TO, repair and substitution of printers X-Com. The integrator also undertakes to trace continuously stocks of consumables and a status of the equipment. Thus, the client needs to monitor only a paper reserve, all the rest provides X-Com. The new service received the name PraaS — Printing-as-a-Service. Today X-Com is one of the few the company in the market proposing the similar solution.

Emergence of computers did not lead to paper consumption reduction at all. Everything happened exactly on the contrary — the last decades the number of the paper consumed by mankind steadily grows. Today it is already about tens of trillions of tons per year. According to international association concerning information management and images, 56% of the organizations from year to year increase costs for printing. According to the same statistics, spend up to 5% of the turnover for printing, transfer and processing of paper documents of the company. It is very big money even for the small companies. And very few people think what there are these costs of and as it is possible to reduce them. Nearly the system integrator became the first in the Russian market who attended to this problem X-Com.

"The cost of printing consists not only of the price of paper and cartridges — Rogankov Igor says, the CEO X-Com — is a cost more of service and replacement of the equipment, there are indirect losses of business because of equipment malfunctions, there are storage costs of paper and supplies. Besides, situations when the number of printers and MFP is simply excessive are frequent, so, spare cash is spent for their service". It is clear, that most of clients are not able to estimate a real picture of costs and the more so it is difficult to them to find effective ways of cost reduction. But the method of cost reduction is already found X-Com — due to optimization and centralization of client costs.

The new program which X-Com предлагает the clients received the name PraaS — Printing-as-a-Service, by analogy with the services of Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) which are already existing in the market. It should be noted that all these solutions rely on "cloud" technologies, and the solution has no relation to these technologies.

Essence of the program it is crystal it is simple: clients pay only for actually printed pages. They do not pay neither for supplies, nor for service and repair of equipment, do not care for maintenance of the necessary stock of consumables, do not wait for months for the equipment from repair — X-Com repairs everything without queue, and for the period of long repair provides the equipment on substitution. The only thing about what the client needs to think — of maintenance of the necessary reserve of paper. And at all this real economy on printing reaches 30-40%. It is confirmed with the experience of the first client which tried the PraaS program on itself — xcom-shop.ru online store.

It is clear, that online stores print many documents: accounts, delivery notes, acts and other. According to the shop director of xcom-shop.ru Igor Denisov, after transition to the PraaS program, his company managed to save about 300,000 rubles on printing. Besides, the number of delays of orders because of malfunctions of printers decreased — as it appeared if the equipment is monitored by specialists, then it breaks much more rare.

Service according to the PraaS program begins with audit of the park of the equipment and assessment of volumes of printing in the company. If it is necessary, updating of the park of printers and MFP is made (in particular, devices which cannot structurally consider the printed pages are subject to replacement). Also lease of the park of the equipment at X-Com по a zero rate is also possible (i.e. the client pays nothing for lease). After that the price which the client will pay for each printed page is defined. This digit averages from 30 to 80 kopeks — depending on volumes of printing and the number of the equipment which is subject to replacement. Then the agreement is signed, and now the client pays only for actually printed pages, and all the rest provides X-Com.

As a result the client receives the following range of services:

• Delivery of the new necessary equipment to the shortest time at the minimum prices or lease of the necessary equipment (investments into purchase are equal to zero)
• Regular maintenance and, if necessary, repair of equipment
• Free delivery of cartridges as required
• The emergency departure to the client in case of refusal technicians
• Providing the equipment on substitution in case of permanent repair

For those clients who use only Hewlett Packard printers the company X-Com can offer participation in the corporate program of this producer which is called CLPPU. This program is almost similar to PraaS from X-Com, but on it not all printing devices but only printers are serviced. It should be noted what X-Com is the exclusive representative of this program of HP in the territory of Russia. In the same way X-Com today is the only company offering so simple and effective program of economy on printing as PraaS.