The CFO’s Guide to Managed Print ROI: A Quantitative Model for NZ Organisations

For many New Zealand organisations, printing is treated as a collection of small expenses rather than a measurable business cost.

A printer is purchased or leased. Toner is ordered when it runs out. IT resolves driver and connectivity issues. Employees reprint documents when something goes wrong. Old devices remain in service because replacing them feels like another capital expense.

Individually, these costs can appear insignificant.

Collectively, they can create a substantial and largely invisible operating cost.

Managed Print Services (MPS) provides a way to bring those costs together, measure them and manage them as a single business function. For CFOs and IT leaders, the question is therefore not simply “How much does a printer cost?” but:

What does our entire print environment cost us — and how much of that cost can we control?

This guide provides a practical New Zealand framework for calculating the financial case for Managed Print Services, including hardware, consumables, maintenance, IT labour, downtime, waste and information-security considerations.

Summary: The MPS Financial Benchmark at a Glance

Managed Print Services (MPS) is a structured approach to managing an organisation's printers, multifunction devices, consumables, maintenance, print policies and security through a coordinated programme.

For New Zealand organisations assessing the business case, the following benchmarks provide a starting point for financial modelling. Actual savings, pricing and payback periods vary according to fleet size, print volume, device mix, service requirements and existing contracts.

MPS financial benchmarks

The 30% figure is consistent with Sharp's published MPS guidance citing Gartner research that print spending can be reduced by up to 30% through MPS.

The remaining figures in this article should be treated as illustrative modelling assumptions rather than guaranteed Sharp savings or industry-wide benchmarks. The strongest business case is built from an organisation's own invoices, meter readings, device utilisation, print volumes and IT-support data.

1. What Is the True Cost of Printing?

The purchase price of a printer represents only one part of the cost.

A CFO assessing print expenditure should consider at least six cost categories:

1. Hardware and leasing
2. Toner, ink and other consumables
3. Maintenance and service
4. IT support and administration
5. Downtime and lost employee productivity
6. Security, compliance and information-risk exposure

This is often referred to as the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of the print environment.

A useful starting formula is:

Total Print Cost = Hardware + Consumables + Service + IT Labour + Downtime + Waste + Risk

The important point is that several of these costs rarely appear on the same invoice.

A business might see a $300 toner invoice, a $10,000 hardware lease and a handful of printer-related IT tickets. The real cost emerges only when those expenses are combined.

Sharp has previously highlighted that many organisations do not understand their total printing costs and that print expenditure can include equipment, supplies, maintenance, paper, energy and IT management.

The simplest way to evaluate MPS is to compare the current unmanaged environment against the proposed managed environment.

The objective is not necessarily to eliminate every printing cost.

It is to make the cost visible, predictable and controllable.

3.1 Hardware and Lease Costs

Start with every device in the organisation.

Record:

• Purchase price
• Lease or rental payment
• Device age
• Remaining contract term
• Replacement date
• Monthly or annual cost
• Estimated residual value
• Number of devices by location
• Pages printed per device

An organisation with 15 printers may discover that it does not actually need 15 devices.

Some may be underutilised desktop printers. Others may be ageing machines retained because nobody has assessed whether they should be replaced.

Fleet right-sizing is therefore one of the first potential sources of savings.

The objective is to match device capability with actual demand rather than maintaining a printer simply because it has always been there.

3.2 Toner, Paper and Consumables

Consumables can become one of the most difficult print costs to control when purchasing is decentralised.

Calculate:

Annual Consumables Cost = Toner + Ink + Waste Toner + Maintenance Kits + Paper + Other Consumables

Then compare that figure with actual print volume.

If a business is spending $20,000 a year on toner but cannot accurately report how many pages it prints, there is a visibility problem.

A managed environment can introduce:

• Automated toner monitoring
• Just-in-time replenishment
• Usage reporting
• Cost-per-page analysis
• Standardised consumables
• Reduced emergency purchasing
• Less excess stock

Sharp's MPS guidance identifies automated, just-in-time supply replenishment as one of the ways managed print can reduce administration and working capital tied up in supplies.

Printer problems often fall to IT even when printing is not an IT priority.

A user cannot print.

A driver stops working.

A printer disappears from the network.

A device needs configuring.

A new employee needs access.

A print queue fails.

Each incident may take only 10 or 20 minutes.

Across hundreds of incidents, however, the labour cost becomes significant.

Calculate the cost

Use:

Annual IT Print Cost = Print-related tickets × Average resolution time × Loaded hourly labour cost

For example, if an organisation has:

• 240 printer-related tickets per year
• 30 minutes average resolution time
• $100/hour loaded IT labour cost

the annual IT cost is:

240 × 0.5 × $100 = $12,000

That is $12,000 of IT capacity being consumed by printing before the organisation has paid for toner, hardware or service.

A managed print programme can reduce this burden through device standardisation, centralised management, remote monitoring and fewer individual devices.

The business case should measure the actual current-state workload rather than assuming every IT hour disappears after MPS implementation.

5. Downtime Has a Financial Cost

The cost of a printer outage is not necessarily the cost of repairing the printer.

The larger cost can be the employee productivity lost while the device is unavailable.

For example:

Downtime Cost = Number of affected employees × Downtime hours × Loaded hourly employee cost

If 20 employees are unable to complete a print-dependent process for one hour, and the average loaded employment cost is $60/hour:

20 × 1 × $60 = $1,200

A single outage has potentially created $1,200 of lost productive capacity.

This is why MPS should be assessed as an operational resilience programme, not simply a printer procurement exercise.

Monitoring, preventative maintenance, standardisation and service-level agreements can help reduce the frequency and duration of avoidable disruption.

6. Security Is Part of the Business Case

Printers and multifunction devices are often overlooked when organisations assess information security.

Yet modern MFPs can:

• Store data
• Connect to corporate networks
• Scan documents
• Email documents
• Access cloud services
• Process customer information
• Handle confidential financial or employee records

For New Zealand organisations, this makes print security relevant to the Privacy Act 2020.

Privacy Act 2020 and Principle 5

Information Privacy Principle 5 requires organisations holding personal information to use security safeguards that are reasonable in the circumstances to protect information against loss, unauthorised access, use, modification, disclosure or other misuse.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner also notes that where personal information is provided to a third party in connection with services, organisations must do everything reasonably within their power to prevent unauthorised use or disclosure.

That makes print governance relevant to a wider information-security strategy.

Common print-security risks include:

• Confidential documents left on output trays
• Unauthorised users accessing printed information
• Unsecured print queues
• Outdated device firmware
• Inconsistent device security configurations
• Uncontrolled scanning destinations
• Excessive user access
• Retained data on device storage

Security should therefore be treated as a risk-reduction component of the MPS business case, rather than assigned an arbitrary dollar saving.

7. Secure Print Release: Turning Security Into Governance

One of the simplest ways to improve print governance is Secure Print Release.

Instead of a document printing immediately, the job is held until the user authenticates at the device.

PaperCut's Secure Print Release functionality allows organisations to hold jobs in a queue until the user identifies themselves and releases the document.

PaperCut Hive also provides print tracking, including information such as the user, printer, page count, colour/black-and-white status and whether a job was securely released.

This creates two important financial benefits:

1. Waste reduction

A document that is printed but never collected can consume paper and toner without producing business value.

With secure release, an employee can decide not to release a job they no longer need.

2. Information governance

A confidential document does not automatically appear on a shared printer output tray simply because somebody clicked Print.

That creates a stronger connection between print management, privacy and security governance.

8. Strategic Savings Levers: How MPS Recovers Capital

A strong MPS business case should identify where savings will actually come from.

1. Fleet Right-Sizing

Consolidate underutilised desktop printers and replace fragmented fleets with appropriately sized multifunction devices where practical.

Potential benefits include:

• Fewer devices
• Lower maintenance overhead
• Reduced consumables complexity
• Lower energy consumption
• Easier IT administration
• Better device utilisation

The goal is not simply to reduce the number of printers.

It is to create the right number of devices for the organisation's actual print demand.

2. Rules-Based Printing

Print policies can reduce unnecessary consumption.

Examples include:

• Duplex by default
• Mono by default
• Colour printing restrictions
• Page limits
• Departmental quotas
• Cost-centre reporting

PaperCut supports policy controls and print tracking that can be used to manage these behaviours.

Even small behavioural changes can create measurable savings when multiplied across thousands or millions of pages.

3. Secure Print Release

Secure release reduces the risk of documents being printed and abandoned.

It also creates better visibility over printing behaviour.

PaperCut describes secure release as a mechanism that keeps print jobs from being released until the user authenticates at the printer.

Rather than assuming a fixed percentage of print jobs are abandoned, organisations should measure their own baseline.

That makes the business case more credible.

4. Lifecycle Optimisation

Ageing printers can create disproportionate maintenance and support costs.

A lifecycle review should consider:

• Device age
• Failure frequency
• Service history
• Print volume
• Energy consumption
• Security capability
• Firmware support
• Consumable availability
• Remaining contract term

Replacing an old printer is not automatically financially beneficial.

The business case should compare the cost of keeping the device against the total cost of replacing and operating the new device.

5. Standardisation

A fleet containing multiple brands and models can increase IT complexity.

Standardisation can reduce:

• Driver management
• User training
• Consumables SKUs
• Service complexity
• Spare parts requirements
• Procurement administration

It can also make security policies easier to apply consistently.

9. Sample ROI Calculation: A 150-Seat New Zealand Organisation

Consider a hypothetical professional services organisation with approximately 150 employees.

Current environment

The organisation has:

• 15 unmanaged print devices
• Multiple printer models
• Fragmented toner purchasing
• Limited print analytics
• Periodic device downtime
• No consistent secure-print policy
• IT staff responding to printer-related issues

Proposed environment

The organisation consolidates to:

• 6 appropriately sized multifunction devices
• Centralised print management
• PaperCut secure print release
• Standardised device configuration
• Automated consumable monitoring
• Usage and cost reporting

This is an illustrative scenario, not a guaranteed Sharp customer outcome.

Direct savings: toner and paper

Assume the organisation currently spends approximately $12,000–$20,000 annually on paper and consumables.

If better fleet management, print policies and reduced waste produce a 30% reduction:

$12,000 × 30% = $3,600

$20,000 × 30% = $6,000

This produces an indicative annual saving of approximately:

$3,600–$6,000

The actual percentage should be calculated from the organisation's own baseline.

Sharp's published MPS material cites potential print-spend reductions of up to 30% through active management.

10. IT Time Recovered

Now consider the IT component.

Suppose the current environment generates approximately:

• 240 printer-related support incidents annually
• 30 minutes average resolution time

That represents:

120 hours of IT capacity

At a loaded labour value of $50/hour:

120 × $50 = $6,000

At $75/hour:

120 × $75 = $9,000

Therefore, the potential annual redirected labour value is approximately:

$6,000–$9,000

This should not automatically be described as a cash saving.

If the organisation does not reduce headcount, the benefit is better described as capacity recovered for higher-value work.

That distinction matters to a CFO.

11. Putting the ROI Together

An illustrative business case could therefore look like this:

The final business case should then compare those benefits with the fully managed annual MPS cost.

Simple ROI formula

ROI % = (Annual Benefit − Annual MPS Cost) ÷ Annual MPS Cost × 100

And:

Payback period

Payback Period = MPS Implementation Cost ÷ Monthly Benefit

This is the calculation CFOs need.

Not simply:

“Managed Print saves money.”

But:

“Our current print environment costs approximately $X per year. The proposed managed environment costs $Y and is expected to reduce controllable costs by $Z, producing a payback period of approximately N months.”

That is a business case.

12. Why the 30–90 Day Window Matters

A 30–90 day period can be useful for establishing whether an MPS programme is producing measurable operational improvements.

However, it should not be treated as a universal guaranteed ROI period.

The actual payback period depends on:

• Existing hardware contracts
• Lease termination costs
• Print volumes
• Device utilisation
• Consumable spend
• Service costs
• IT workload
• Number of devices
• Implementation costs
• Security requirements
• Contract structure

The first 30–90 days should therefore focus on establishing a reliable before-and-after baseline.

Track:

• Pages printed
• Colour versus mono
• Cost per page
• Device utilisation
• Toner consumption
• Print-related IT tickets
• Downtime
• Unreleased print jobs
• Number of devices
• Monthly print expenditure

This turns MPS from a procurement project into a measurable continuous-improvement programme.

13. What CFOs Should Ask Before Approving an MPS Investment

Before signing an MPS agreement, ask the provider to quantify:

Cost

• What is our current total print cost?
• What is included in the proposed monthly fee?
• What costs are excluded?
• What happens when print volumes change?
• Are there minimum volumes or overage charges?

Hardware

• How many devices do we actually need?
• Which devices are underutilised?
• What is the recommended replacement cycle?
• What happens to existing leased equipment?

Consumables

• Are toner and maintenance included?
• How is replenishment triggered?
• How much stock should we hold?
• How is colour usage controlled?

IT

• How many printer-related tickets do we currently raise?
• How much IT time is spent supporting print?
• What will be managed by the provider?
• What remains with internal IT?

Security

• Which devices process personal information?
• Is Secure Print Release available?
• How are users authenticated?
• How is device data protected?
• How are firmware and security updates managed?
• What audit information is available?

Measurement

• What KPIs will be reported?
• What is our baseline?
• When will savings be measured?
• How often will the fleet be reviewed?

If a provider cannot clearly explain how savings will be measured, the business case is incomplete.

14. How to Build an MPS Business Case in Five Steps

Step 1: Audit the current fleet

Create a complete inventory of every printer and MFP.

Record:

• Location
• Model
• Age
• Monthly volume
• Colour/mono volume
• Contract status
• Monthly cost
• Consumable spend
• Service history

Step 2: Calculate Total Cost of Ownership

Bring together:

Hardware + Consumables + Service + IT + Downtime + Administration

This creates the baseline.

Step 3: Identify the Savings Levers

Determine which opportunities apply:

• Fleet consolidation
• Device standardisation
• Duplex printing
• Colour controls
• Secure Print Release
• Automated supplies
• Reduced IT workload
• Preventative maintenance
• Contract consolidation

Step 4: Model the Future State

Compare:

Current Annual Cost

against

Proposed Annual MPS Cost

Then calculate:

• Annual saving
• Monthly saving
• ROI
• Payback period
• IT capacity recovered
• Security improvements

Step 5: Measure After Implementation

Do not stop when the contract is signed.

Review the environment regularly.

A good MPS programme should provide visibility into:

• Print volume
• Cost
• Device utilisation
• User behaviour
• Colour usage
• Waste
• Service incidents
• Security controls

This allows the organisation to continuously optimise the fleet.

15. The Business Case for Managed Print Is Bigger Than Printing

For CFOs, the strongest MPS business case is rarely about toner alone.

It is about control.

Managed Print Services can bring together several fragmented costs and turn them into a measurable operating model.

Instead of:

15 printers + multiple suppliers + toner invoices + IT tickets + downtime + security gaps

the organisation moves towards:

One governed print environment with measurable costs, standardised devices, defined service levels and visibility over usage.

That shift can create value in four areas:

Financial control

Predictable expenditure and better visibility of total print costs.

Operational efficiency

Less time spent managing devices, supplies and printer-related support issues.

Security and privacy

Better control over who can release documents and how print information is managed.

Sustainability

Reduced unnecessary printing, better device utilisation and greater visibility over paper and print consumption.

Sharp's New Zealand guidance positions MPS around cost control, fleet optimisation, automated supplies, IT efficiency and security — rather than simply selling printing hardware.

16. Download the Managed Print Business Case Template

Building an MPS business case does not need to start with a blank spreadsheet.

Use a structured model to document:

• Current print fleet
• Monthly and annual costs
• Device utilisation
• Consumable expenditure
• IT support requirements
• Downtime
• Security considerations
• Proposed future state
• Expected savings
• ROI
• Payback period

Download the Sharp Managed Print Services Business Case Template to start building your organisation's business case.

Download the Managed Print Services Business Case Template

17. How Sharp New Zealand Can Help

A credible MPS business case starts with an accurate baseline.

Sharp New Zealand can assess your current print environment, identify opportunities to consolidate and right-size your fleet, and develop a managed print strategy around your organisation's operational, financial and security requirements.

The process can include:

1. Assess
Review your current devices, print volumes, costs and workflows.

2. Analyse
Identify underutilised devices, unnecessary costs, support overheads and security gaps.

3. Design
Develop a future-state fleet and managed print model.

4. Implement
Deploy the agreed hardware, software, policies and service model.

5. Measure
Track usage, costs, service performance and savings over time.

The result is not simply a new fleet of printers.

It is a more measurable and governed approach to workplace printing.

Explore Sharp New Zealand's business technology solutions

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Managed Print Services worth it?

MPS can be financially worthwhile when an organisation has fragmented devices, uncontrolled consumables, significant printer-related IT workload, avoidable downtime or limited visibility of print costs. The correct approach is to calculate the organisation's current Total Cost of Ownership and compare it with the proposed managed environment.

How much can Managed Print Services save?

Savings vary considerably. Sharp's published MPS guidance cites potential print-spend reductions of up to 30% through active management. The actual result depends on the starting environment, print volume, device utilisation, policies and contract structure.

How quickly can an MPS investment pay for itself?

There is no universal payback period. A 30–90 day period can be used to establish measurable operational improvements, but the actual financial payback depends on existing contracts, implementation costs, print volumes and achievable savings.

What costs should be included in an MPS ROI calculation?

A comprehensive calculation should include hardware, leasing, toner, paper, maintenance, service, IT labour, downtime, administration and relevant security or risk considerations.

Does MPS reduce IT workload?

It can. Device standardisation, centralised management, automated supplies and remote monitoring can reduce the amount of printer-related administration handled internally. The financial value should be calculated from the organisation's actual IT ticket volume and resolution time.

Does Managed Print help with Privacy Act 2020 compliance?

MPS can support an organisation's information-security controls, but it does not by itself make an organisation compliant with the Privacy Act 2020. Principle 5 requires reasonable security safeguards for personal information, including protection against unauthorised access, use, modification, disclosure and other misuse.

What is Secure Print Release?

Secure Print Release holds a print job until the user authenticates at the printer and releases it. This can help prevent confidential documents from being left unattended and can reduce unnecessary printing.

How should a CFO measure MPS success?

Track measurable KPIs such as total print expenditure, cost per page, device utilisation, consumable spend, printer-related IT tickets, downtime, colour-print volume, unreleased print jobs and the number of devices in the fleet.

The Bottom Line

The business case for Managed Print Services should not start with a printer catalogue.

It should start with a number:

What is our organisation's true annual cost of printing?

Once hardware, consumables, service, IT labour, downtime, waste and security considerations are brought together, the financial opportunity becomes easier to see.

For organisations with fragmented print environments, MPS can provide a framework to reduce controllable costs, recover IT capacity, improve operational visibility and strengthen print governance.

The most credible business case is one based on your own data.

Audit the fleet. Calculate the total cost. Identify the savings levers. Model the future state. Measure the result.

That is how Managed Print becomes a CFO-level business case rather than simply another technology purchase.

Ready to quantify your print environment?

Talk to Sharp New Zealand about Managed Print Services