Explore insights from Gartner IOCS 2024 on how DEX trends are transforming print management and how PrintOps aligns print strategies with modern IT operations.
Gartner’s IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference (IOCS), which took place December 10-12, highlighted a crucial trend: the Digital Employee Experience (DEX) is now a strategic imperative. This shift underscores the need to rethink print management as part of broader IT operations. At Pharos, we believe this requires moving beyond traditional print management to embrace PrintOps—a modern approach that aligns print strategies with IT priorities, enhancing employee experience and productivity. It combines people, process and technology for printing that ‘just works’ everywhere – for everyone.
The IT, DEX, and I&O leaders we spoke with at IOCS made it clear: simplifying, securing, and integrating print management into existing IT workflows are top priorities. PrintOps meets these needs while positioning organizations to thrive in a cloud-first, digitally connected world.
What is PrintOps?
The Role of Print in Digital Employee Experience
DEX emphasizes delivering seamless, intuitive technology experiences to employees. Yet, print management often remains an overlooked element in this equation. Outdated or inefficient print workflows can frustrate users, slow productivity, and burden IT teams with avoidable support requests. By integrating PrintOps into DEX strategies, organizations can transform a historically overlooked area into a streamlined, user-friendly asset.
For example, intuitive print solutions that will be able to support single sign-on, self-service capabilities, and hybrid work environments directly enhance the employee experience while reducing IT overhead. At Pharos, we are constantly innovating solutions that ensure printing is simple, secure, and aligned with the demands of today’s workforce.
Observability: A Key to Optimizing Print Environments
As organizations strive to improve the Digital Employee Experience, they must focus on creating seamless, intuitive workflows across all technology touchpoints—including print. However, achieving this level of efficiency requires more than just modern tools; it demands visibility. This is where observability becomes crucial.
Observability empowers IT teams to proactively monitor and optimize every part of the IT ecosystem, including print environments, to ensure they align with employee needs. Without this visibility, print workflows often remain a blind spot, leading to inefficiencies, user frustration, and unnecessary IT support tickets. By incorporating observability into print management strategies, organizations can ensure that every element of the employee experience, from login to printing, just works.
PrintOps: Centralizing Print Management in IT Operations
One of the most exciting discussions at the Gartner IT IOCS Conference revolved around the potential to manage print infrastructure directly from within ServiceNow. This integration would enable IT teams to oversee their entire print environment alongside other critical IT systems, consolidating operations within a single, familiar platform.
Imagine the benefits: automated workflows, enhanced security, and a unified approach to IT service management (ITSM). By adopting a PrintOps strategy, organizations can modernize their print management processes while aligning them with the tools IT teams already use.
Cloud-First Strategies and Print Management
As organizations continue their shift toward cloud-first IT strategies, print management must keep pace. Cloud-based platforms allow IT teams to monitor, secure, and optimize print environments from anywhere. This flexibility is essential for supporting hybrid work models and ensuring consistency across geographically dispersed teams.
PrintOps aligns with cloud-first initiatives by providing centralized control, scalability, and insights into print operations. Whether it’s reducing costs, improving security, or enhancing user experiences, a SaaS platform is a key component of future-focused IT strategies.
What Businesses Are Looking For
Throughout our conversations with business leaders at IOCS, we consistently heard about the challenges of managing complex, fragmented print workflows in hybrid environments and the need for solutions that integrate seamlessly into their IT ecosystems.
The leaders we spoke with are:
- Looking to simplify and secure printing workflows.
- Interested in proactive monitoring of their environments.
- Seeking to migrate on-prem print infrastructure to the cloud to better manage enterprise-wide print operations.
- Aiming to integrate their print management with existing IT workflows.
These businesses are already seeing how PrintOps can address these needs by aligning print management with their larger IT strategies.
Why It’s Time to Rethink Print Management
As organizations migrate to the cloud, they often encounter new complexities in managing print workflows across hybrid environments. Traditional approaches fall short of addressing these challenges, which is why a modern PrintOps strategy is essential.
The trends highlighted at Gartner’s IOCS 2024—from DEX to observability and cloud-first strategies—make it clear that print management must evolve. By embracing PrintOps, organizations can:
- Enhance the employee experience through seamless, secure printing workflows.
- Empower IT teams with greater visibility and control over print environments.
- Align print management with broader IT strategies, including ITSM and cloud-first initiatives.
At Pharos, we’re committed to helping organizations modernize their print environments in ways that directly impact DEX and IT operations. Ready to rethink your approach to print management? Contact Pharos today to discover how PrintOps can transform your IT strategy.
