Your printers are monitored. Supplies arrive before you run out. Device issues get resolved before your team notices. Your managed print services are working exactly as they should.
So why is the rest of your IT still waiting for something to break?
Today, we’ll dive into the key reasons why it just makes good sense to combine your managed print provider and managed IT provider.
Think about what your managed print provider has learned in the time they have been managing your fleet.
This is key institutional knowledge that translates directly into your IT environment.
When a managed IT provider starts from scratch with a new client, the onboarding process is substantial. Think network assessments, infrastructure reviews, security audits, and compliance documentation. All of it takes time, and all of it depends on understanding the business deeply enough to make good decisions. Your managed print provider has already built much of that foundation, which carries real operational value.
Remember, the multifunction printer in your office is not a standalone device.
It has an IP address, an operating system, internal storage, and a direct connection to your corporate network. It sends and receives files, connects to cloud services, integrates with your directory, and processes some of the most sensitive documents in your organization—contracts, financials, HR records, patient information.
That makes it part of your IT infrastructure, whether your IT provider manages it or not.
The industry has already reached the same conclusion. 48% of organizations now use a single provider for both MPS and IT services. That number jumps to 56% for midmarket businesses. The reported benefits: simplified procurement, reduced costs, enhanced efficiency, and stronger security.
That shift is happening because print devices managed in isolation create gaps that are difficult to see and harder to close.
Bringing both under a single managed services provider closes that gap. It means your MFPs are treated as the network endpoints they actually are—monitored, updated, and secured with the same rigor applied to your servers and workstations.
Most businesses have at least one document workflow that touches both print and IT:
These processes feel simple on the surface. But when the systems that support them are managed by two different providers with no shared visibility, small friction points accumulate into operational drag.
When managed print and managed IT operate under the same provider, document workflows can be designed, monitored, and optimized as a single system.
Your IT provider understands how data moves through your network. Your print provider understands where documents originate and how they are handled. When it is the same team, those two perspectives inform each other, leading to workflows that actually match how your business operates.
Hybrid work has changed the relationship between employees and office infrastructure in ways that most print environments were not originally designed to accommodate.
When someone works from home three days a week, or your team spans multiple locations, the question of how to print securely and reliably from anywhere becomes a daily operational reality.
This is where managed IT and managed print services reinforce each other most directly. Cloud-based printing allows employees to send print jobs securely over the internet to any authorized device, without relying on a local network connection or an on-premise print server.
But enabling that capability securely requires IT infrastructure that is properly configured, monitored, and maintained.
Authentication policies, network segmentation, encrypted job routing—these are IT decisions that directly determine whether your cloud print environment is genuinely secure.
Reactive IT is expensive. When servers go down, printers fail, or network issues surface during peak business hours, the cost is not just the repair; it is the downtime, the disrupted workflows, and the staff time spent managing the fallout instead of doing their actual work.
Proactive monitoring changes that equation. When your managed IT provider has visibility into your full technology environment, including your print fleet, they can identify patterns that precede problems:
And they can fix them quickly.
This is the advantage that a bundled managed services provider delivers that two separate providers simply cannot replicate. When IT monitoring and print monitoring operate in the same platform, under the same team, trends across the full environment become visible.
A print device behaving unusually might be an isolated hardware issue, or it might be an early signal of a network problem that will affect other systems. A provider managing both can tell the difference.
Budget predictability is one of the most consistent pain points for small and mid-sized businesses managing their technology.
When print and IT are contracted separately, costs are harder to forecast, billing disputes require coordination between vendors, and price increases arrive from multiple directions with little warning.
Bundling managed print and managed IT services with a single provider replaces that complexity with a structure that is easier to manage and easier to plan around.
The accountability benefit is just as significant as the financial one. When a problem spans both print and IT, like a network issue affecting device connectivity or a configuration change that disrupts document routing, separate vendors will each look to the other for ownership. With a single provider managing both environments, that question never comes up. They own it. They resolve it.
That dynamic also changes how your provider engages with your business over time. A managed services provider with visibility into your full technology environment has a stronger foundation for strategic planning—recommending hardware refreshes at the right time, identifying inefficiencies before they become budget problems, and aligning your technology roadmap with your business goals rather than managing a narrow slice of your infrastructure in isolation.
If your organization relies on managed print services and is managing IT separately (or still handling IT in-house), there is a simpler, more effective path forward.
SymQuest provides both managed print and managed IT services to businesses across Vermont, northern New York, New Hampshire, and Maine, with the local expertise and cross-domain visibility to manage your full technology environment as a single, coherent system.
Learn how bundling managed print and managed IT services can simplify your operations and strengthen your technology foundation. Click Here.