HP Managed Print Flex is designed to satisfy both the needs of home and remote-based workers, as well as those in conventional offices.
Paul Birkett, Global Head of Commercial Services and Solutions, HP
Today, at their channel partner-focused HP Reinvent event, HP Inc. is announcing HP Managed Print Flex, a new cloud-first Managed Print Service [MPS] subscription plan designed to make management of hybrid print environments easier. It provides a secure zero-trust environment for home-based and remote workers, introduces new features that will help customers optimize costs, and will provide channel partners with new revenue opportunities that will replace the decline in on-prem revenues created by workplace transitions.
“HP Managed Print Flex is a new type of managed print – one that is born in the cloud and embraces the remote worker,” said Paul Birkett, Global Head of Commercial Services and Solutions at HP.
Birkett noted that 63% of companies have already adopted a productivity everywhere workforce model.
“The ability to work everywhere is now a necessity and not a luxury,” he said. “Some workers may never set foot in an office again, so companies have to go remote, and many are not ready for this.”
Birkett said that IT decision makers need to make printing easy, while addressing risks, in working from a trusted environment to a zero-trust environment. Their channel partners also need value added services to backfill potential lost revenues and to also help them to move into high growth areas that are easy to manage.
“This new cloud first subscription plan addresses these challenges,” he stated. “How can you do managed print with a hybrid work force?”
Birkett laid out multiple positive impacts of the new offering.
“It helps businesses optimize costs by simplifying management of contracts, by improving productivity of the print itself, and delivering flexibility to scale or change the contracts as businesses need change,” he noted. “Shifting to the cloud lets the customer choose the printer most suitable to their needs and support employees in the office or at home with the technologies they need to be productive.”
Most HP printer products are part of HP Managed Print Flex.
“It’s a curated portfolio of products that goes from the 8000 series, an A3 60 page MFP, down to Office Jet Pro devices for the home worker,” Birkett said. “A large number of products have been selected, all of which are suitable for full management in the cloud.”
HP Managed Print Flex features HP’s Smart Pricing Plan to automatically adjust pricing month-to-month to ensure customers get the best cost option based on actual volume printed.
“Smart Pricing Plan automatically adjusts for the lowest cost option, so that you don’t get locked into something that costs you more,” Birkett said. “The plan adapts every month so that you always pay the right price. Ink is delivered on an automated basis, and break-fix services have next-day site support even for home based workers.
“The printers are all billed under a single contract, in which a page is a page, so it doesn’t differentiate between mono and colour printing,” he added. “The contracts are a short term one-year commitment with automated renewals.”
HP Managed Print Flex comes with HP Roam out of the box to print securely from virtually anywhere. Every device and every plan also comes with an HP Wolf security plan to configure the right security and set it up so there are no vulnerabilities.
The plan ultimately is to complement the printers with other PSG products, although Birkett was cagey enough not to identify any specifically.
“It is designed to be merged with other IT services models, and can coexist aside other IT services easily,” he said.
HP already has its HP Flexworker program that adds remote workers o a managed print services contract, but the intention is to eventually fold it into Managed Print Flex.
“They will coexist for a while, but the intention is that Flexworker will eventually roll into Managed Print Flex,” Birkett said.
Birkett also noted the advantages of Managed Print Flex for HP partners.
“HP Managed Print Flex offers channel partners an especially compelling revenue to grow print revenues and profit from a low touch recurring revenue opportunity,” he said. “Add-on solutions can be bought and added on at any point in the subscription. There are very short selling cycles, due to complete transparency on pricing.”
HP Managed Print Flex is currently piloting with select resellers in the U.S., U.K., and Germany, and is scheduled to be widely available in the spring of 2022.
