MPS Monitor has announced the integration of PaperCut MF and Papercut NG print management data into its Analytics BI platform. The goal of this integration is to provide a feature-rich business intelligence (BI) and reporting environment to imaging dealers and managed print services (MPS) end users that use the PaperCut MF and Papercut NG platforms for print management, job accounting and secure printing.

MPS Monitor Analytics is a full and comprehensive BI platform designed for imaging dealers, printer resellers and MPS providers based entirely on Microsoft's Power BI Embedded technology. The solution enables users to access a full BI environment from within their MPS Monitor web portals — all without the need for separate accounts, different portals or additional licensing. Users have access to a full self-service BI experience with the ability to modify existing dashboards and reports, or they can create new ones extremely easily without any coding or previous BI skills. The company recently announced that its BI environment has been the subject of an extensive feature published on the Customer Stories showcase of Microsoft's global corporate site. Through the integration of data coming from PaperCut MF, MPS Monitor is substantially enriching its BI capabilities by importing all the data that PaperCut is able to export using standard data integration features into its Analytics system.

A typical PaperCut MF instance produces a vast amount of historical, unstructured data related to all the aspects of managed print: type and size of documents printed; users and departments that print; cost of each single print job; environmental impact of print activities; and savings generated by the implementation of print policies, rules and best practices. This valuable and extensive data set can now be merged inside the MPS Monitor Power BI Embedded database, so that all the raw data generated by PaperCut MF is transformed into stunning visuals with advanced filtering and slicing features, drill-through capabilities and meaningful aggregations.

The result is a massive increase in the ability to create insights and data visualizations, by leveraging the power of real-time data coming from devices to analyze user behaviors, identify and compare costs, analyze printing patterns and implement optimization strategies on each print fleet where PaperCut MF or Papercut NG is active.

Dealers and managed print providers can take advantage of these extensive reporting and analytics capabilities to perform quarterly or monthly business reviews with their customers, who conversely may access Analytics reports and dashboards with their print usage data at any given moment, in real time and from the cloud, by simply accessing the MPS Monitor Portal. The PaperCut MF and PaperCut NG integration does not need any additional software installation or specific setup, as it is powered by the same MPS Monitor DCA that is used to collect data and to monitor printing devices. The functionality is available to all customers running the latest version of MPS Monitor DCA, at no additional cost.

"We believe that business intelligence can be a real game-changer for the imaging industry," said Nicola De Blasi, CEO, MPS Monitor. "Combining in a single platform the granularity and depth of data accumulated by a PaperCut server, the power and ease of use of Power BI Embedded, with the advantages of a cloud-only architecture, makes this integration an exceptional add-on to MPS Monitor's overall value proposition. The benefit of this is even more compelling as it does not require any specific on-prem installation, nor any additional license cost. We expect that dealers and customers using both MPS Monitor and PaperCut will love being able to immediately enjoy the advanced BI and reporting on PaperCut, with zero extra effort."

"In the current climate, resellers and end users are looking for competitive advantage, increased insight and the ability to turn data into information to help improve business decisions," said Stu Brookes, EMEA head of channel & alliances, PaperCut. "The integration created by MPS Monitor allows our mutual customers to maximize their investment in both print management and fleet manangement, providing the BI platform that adds value at all steps in identifying opportunities to reduce costs and improve digital document processes."