MPS Monitor®, the company that develops and distributes the leading platform for the remote monitoring and management of printers and multifunctional devices, has announced that it has been the subject of an extensive feature published on the Customer Stories showcase of Microsoft’s global corporate site. The feature focuses on how MPS Monitor is successfully using Microsoft Power BI and Azure to deliver a comprehensive, easy-to-use data analytics environment to provide visual and interactive access to data for its customers.
The feature explains the challenges the company faced before the adoption of Power BI. Previously, MPS Monitor was reliant on multi-dimensional OLAP cubes and data being processed every night in the cloud system and updated daily, rather than in real time. Not only did this process require a considerable amount of data to be sent to customers every day via file sharing services such as CUBE files, but customers were then required to connect to those files and interact with data using Excel pivot tables. This data environment made it increasingly difficult and time-consuming to create useful and compelling reports and graphics, as well as share those visualisations. As MPS Monitor’s number of users began to grow, producing and distributing hundreds of CUBEs every day became more problematic and the OLAP environment was more challenging to maintain.
The feature celebrates how MPS Monitor successfully used Microsoft’s Power BI Embedded platform to address its business and technical requirements with the creation of its highly effective BI solution, called MPS Monitor Analytics. This was designed and implemented entirely by MPS Monitor’s core team without any external resource, pointing to the strength and excellence of MPS Monitor’s in-house talent for successfully addressing customer challenges.
The MPS Monitor Analytics solution enables users to access a full BI environment from within their web portal – 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 reports or to create new ones from scratch, with no need to pay (or wait) for developers to create new BI reports and dashboards.
Commenting on Microsoft’s focus on MPS Monitor, Nicola De Blasi, CEO of MPS Monitor, stated: “It is a great honour for MPS Monitor that Microsoft chose to put a spotlight on us and our success in using Power BI Embedded to create MPS Monitor Analytics. The results MPS Monitor has enjoyed to date are testimony to our own pioneering spirit and enthusiasm for embracing proven technology to solve customers’ challenges, and we are flattered that Microsoft has chosen to showcase our achievements.”
Founded on a pioneering vision of how best to help dealers and MPS providers manage print, MPS Monitor 2.0 is a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) remote fleet monitoring platform which enables the remote monitoring and management of printers and MFPs. Not only does MPS Monitor 2.0 help dealers and MPS resellers improve service levels and reduce costs, it also helps to optimise dealer operations and improve overall service margins. Being cloud-based has given MPS Monitor the scalability and flexibility to quickly and easily accommodate the changes imposed upon businesses globally by the pandemic – such as the move to the hybrid working model – which has changed how and where print happens, how it is managed and how it is accounted for.
In addition to Microsoft, the company recently announced collaborations with other key technology industry leaders – including HP, Okta, Asolvi and Zebra Technologies – which has seen the company successfully meet the rapidly evolving print needs of dealers and MPS providers worldwide..
