The pharmaceutical industry faces a lot of pressures, from managing regulatory compliance to ensuring patient safety. Managed print services can help businesses in the pharmaceutical industry by streamlining a critical aspect of technology – printing.
From pharmaceutical printing to internal communications, managed print services (MPS) can positively impact pharmaceutical operations. Whether your organization is a large company or a local pharmacy, MPS solutions can help.
A managed print services provider is a third-party vendor that handles all aspects of in-house printing. This includes installing equipment such as printers and multifunction printers (MFPs), handling maintenance, and monitoring usage to manage supplies and ensure security.
9 Ways Managed Print Services Benefit the Pharmaceutical Industry
The pharmaceutical industry has unique challenges that most other industries don’t have. For pharmaceutical companies that are developing new drugs, managed print services can help tremendously with the collaborative research and testing processes. For pharmacies on the front line dealing with customers daily, managed print services can keep everything running smoothly.
1. Handling All Types of Common Printing Needs
Managed print services can help with all aspects of pharmaceutical printing, including prescriptions, prescription bottle tags, medication guides, and printing paperwork.
2. Enabling Remote Work for Off-Site Personnel
For certain administrative personnel, salespeople, and other workers, remote work is possible in the pharmaceutical industry. With managed print services, it becomes even more accessible. Employees can work remotely because they could print documents in the corporate office from anywhere.
3. Managing and Cutting Costs
Managed print services can help to manage printing costs in several ways. First, since the managed print services vendor supplies the printers, your company doesn’t have to buy new printing equipment. The best multifunction printers can be pricey and cost thousands of dollars. Furthermore, MPS can help manage costs as your printing usage will be tracked, and thus, excessive usage can be curbed.
4. Safeguarding Privacy of Information
Without managed print services, your organization may have an ad hoc group of printers, scanners, and MFPs loosely hooked up to an open network. Hopefully, this is not the case – as if patient information is involved, this is a violation of HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. The right managed print services solution will have the latest security that is HIPAA-compliant, thus ensuring privacy and security.
5. Reducing Waste
The great part about using managed print services is that you can go green while saving money. Far too often, companies are wasting paper and toner by overprinting – printing pages that aren’t necessary due to duplication or lack of controls. With centralized management, managed print services provide a way to monitor printer usage.
Additionally, with the latest printer technologies, paper and toner saving settings can be used when appropriate, such as duplex (double-sided printing) and toner saving modes.
6. Improving the Customer’s Experience
Customers at pharmacies tend to be impatient to pick up their prescriptions. The last thing a patient wants to deal with is a longer wait due to a printer problem behind the front desk. Outdated printers that get jammed or break can cause a massive backlog.
7. Maximizing Pharmacy Productivity
If there is one thing a busy pharmacy needs from its printer fleet, it is reliability. Prescriptions and labels need to be printed correctly on the first try. Pharmacists do not have the time or bandwidth to be constantly troubleshooting pesky recurring printer problems. Managed print solutions can ensure this reliability, with maintenance staff on-hand for fast onsite repairs or printer replacements when needed.
8. Providing High Quality, Dependable Printing
Pharmaceutical organizations have a lot of specialty printing needs. From labels to envelopes, all different types of media and sizes may require printing support. Outsourcing this printing may not be an option, so a reliable in-house printing system needs to be established.
Printing from a variety of devices is also supported through managed print services. So, whether you need to print from tablets, smartphone, or desktop computers, MPS solutions can help.
9. Enabling Pharmacists to Focus on Customers
A printer solution that works allows pharmacists to focus more on customers. The printing platform should be in many ways “invisible” – it just works, and no-one needs to think about it except for the managed print services provider.
Managed Print Services for the Pharmaceutical Industry
Managed print services provide a way for pharmaceutical companies to reduce costs while streamlining processes. By improving reliability, MPS can make the customer experience better at pharmacies. At larger pharmaceutical companies, managed print solutions can enable collaboration and support research and development.