Raise senior management’s awareness of MPS. Awareness is beginning to emerge at middle management level. But it needs to be elevated, preferably to CIO and chief financial officer level. The potential investment and change associated with MPS are substantial, so you need senior management support to ensure commitment from the workforce and communication of the benefits.

Consider requesting a risk and reward or penalties and incentives clause. This should guarantee savings when setting service level agreements (SLAs). You should also ask about technology refresh programmes to ensure your machines are maintained with new technology as it becomes available and equipment is replaced or redeployed as required.

Review regularly and act on the findings. Regular reviews, ideally quarterly, should be part of the MPS contract, but ongoing internal reviews of machine use are necessary to identify problems. Reviews should involve employees from the finance, IT and facilities departments, as well as from business units.

Analyse workflow and business processes. Digitising the workflow and reviewing company business processes are the stages following an MPS contract. Some processes might become more electronic, and paper use may be reduced or eliminated. Using digital signatures internally, for example, may allow you to save time, while reducing the need for paper. But you should make sure your contracts are flexible enough to permit product redeployment and workflow modification.

Manage the transition. This is a critical part of the outsourcing relationship. Educate users about productivity features and cost savings to ensure a smooth transition and efficiency of new machines deployed. Staff must know why MPS has been implemented and how to use machines’ new features.