Managed Print Services Could Stop Employee Theft

Adopting managed print services could control corporate theft, one expert has said.

Edward Crowley, writing for mpsinsights.com, highlighted the recent case of Marque Gumbs, a former employee at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York, who has been accused of stealing almost $4 million (£2.5 million) in toner cartridges from his employer. Gumbs ordered the cartridges through the hospital, reselling them to fuel a luxury lifestyle of property and flash cars.

According to Crowley, while managed print services - available from providers like Hewlett-Packard and Lexmark - are known help firms save money and improve productivity, they could also be useful in keeping a lid on worker theft.

"The reality is that the unmanaged nature of printing invites employee theft," Crowley wrote. While the Gumbs case is admittedly unusual, smaller-scale theft takes place all the time, whether its employees printing personal documents at work or taking an ink cartridge home with them.

"Since the cost of imaging (printing, copying and faxing) documents is highly decentralised, without some type of managed print services program to centrally monitor asset deployment and usage, the potential for shrinkage is dramatic," Crowley wrote.

Given the "highly-unmanaged, high-risk" nature of document production in the work place, businesses may find a managed print service very valuable indeed.

Posted by Nicole Stevens.