Earlier this month CompTIA, the non-profit association for the IT industry, introduced a new business-level credential for providers of managed print services who commit to a code of conduct, industry-accepted best practices, and high levels of customer service and support. The CompTIA Managed Print Trustmark is designed to qualify and differentiate organizations providing on-premise print services via a managed services business model while at the same time accelerating the adoption of managed print services.
Corey Simpson
“We talked about ways to accelerate adoption of MPS and two themes came to the top and one was the training and accreditation of solutions providers and the other was the education of end users,” explains Corey Simpson, CompTIA’s staff leader for the [partner] community. “The first way we wanted to address that was have a team focus on credentials and something that would identify the business’s practices, and then on the training side, something that would help them do it better.”
Companies seeking the CompTIA Managed Print Trustmark are evaluated in several areas including the internal practices and procedures they use to run their business along with the external activities and operations they engage in with customers and prospects.
“What this does is separate you if you have a Trustmark from your other competitors,” says Ian Berger of Parts Now!, a member of the CompTIA managed print services community. “What you’re going to see in the industry is companies, and especially state governments and schools, place this in bids and you’ll see an MPS Trustmark-accredited company. They’re going to understand that if you’re going to come in and touch my stuff you need to follow these best practices.”
Before they can go through the online training and answer the various questions and become accredited, a dealer needs to upload a copy of their master services agreement as well as a copy of their operating procedures.
Although service is a key component of a managed print services program, organizations that don’t have a service tech for managed print can still receive credit from CompTIA if the third-party service provider they’re working with has an approved program. For example, a provider who uses an organization such as Logical Maintenance Solutions (LMS), as their service provider will receive credit since LMS already has that Trustmark.
CompTIA is spreading the word to its members and through its partnerships with key industry players, including Parts Now!, Xerox, HP, Supplies Network, and GreatAmerica Leasing who in turn will encourage many of their dealer and reseller customers to participate.
The price to become accredited is a modest $199. “For us it’s more about getting it out in the industry and making things better,” says Simpson. “The cliché that goes around CompTIA is ‘high tide raises all boats’. What we want to do is get the adoption, get it out there, and make a difference. If we can create a standard that says this is what managed print is, we think that through the accreditation of solutions providers, we can in an indirect way address the education of end users.”
CompTIA has found that end users either don’t know what managed print is or they tried it once and had a terrible experience and never want to go back to it. “If we can create a standard and say this is managed print, we can hopefully adjust that for them so there is at least an option out there that’s been reviewed.”
The Trustmark program is off to a running start and Simpson expects as many as 200 MPS providers will earn the Trustmark by the end of this year.
What do those 200 organizations have in common?
“They already have an understanding [of MPS] and what’s expected of them,” says Simpson. “If they’ve already gone through a [MPS] sales and organizational program like a Parts Now!, Supplies Network or Photizo and retained it, they should be able to go through the process and get the Trustmark pretty quickly. Companies who have not done the training or retained it will have some issues.”
