Downtime

Unreliable printers break down. Just ask any retail worker that has had to struggle with a stubborn receipt printer, or any warehouse worker that has held their head and groaned at a beeping mobile printer that just refuses to print a barcode.

This eats into valuable time as employees who aren’t printer-specialists work to repair the problem and get things back on track—not to mention the fact that even if you have a dedicated support person inhouse, you’re still losing time in comparison to if the print system just worked in the first place. Wouldn’t it be more efficient for your IT staff to focus on system improvements and upgrades, instead of putting their energies into getting the printer working? That lost time means lost money, unhappy customers, and a break in your supply chain, all at once.

Workflow and collaboration

‘Reliability’ when it comes to printers means being able to do what you need to do, consistently—it doesn’t matter what you’re trying to produce.

This means having printers that can print in multiple formats, from multiple sources. PDFs, reports, presentations, statistics: any and all of these should be accessible through a reliable print system. Without it, there’s a disruption in your workflow. 

This goes for collaboration as well. Imagine if you were trying to share a recent retail report with a colleague. With a reliable printer system, you’d be able to scan, copy, email and share that physical report all in a few steps. But all too often, retail print systems require you to switch from scanner to computer to printer—and back again, if the scanned document wasn’t good enough.

Once again, that’s wasted time and wasted resources, damaging your bottom line through inefficiencies.

But let’s forget about physically sharing a report in the same room. That’s so archaic in these days of remote work. The real magic happens when you can scan to a cloud-based server, and your colleague can print it from half-way across the world just as easily as they would from the office. No PC or multiple machines required.

Consistency

Every retail worker has encountered some variation of this advice: “Don’t use that printer, it’s on the fritz and only works from this device/with these documents/these colours”.

‘Picky printer syndrome’ is a consistent hole in retail efficiencies, and can quickly get out of hand as the printer fleet gets older and less reliable, especially as you upgrade or replace connected devices.

When part of employee training centres around which printer works with which computer, you know you’ve got a serious efficiency issue on your hands.It gets even worse when you realise the sheer amount of wasted physical resources, such as paper, ink and toner, that is sacrificed as a means of discovering these problems in the first place. It costs you money, it costs you time, it frustrates your workers—why would anyone let this keep occurring in their business?

How Brother Managed Print Services helps

Brother Managed Print Services (MPS) provides the consumable replenishment, maintenance, workflow efficiencies and, not least of all, the devices to cover the needs of your retail business.

To find out more about the MPS solution for retail businesses, download our free ebook.