Copy that: print services remain on enterprise radar

One consequence of these developments is that companies need to profoundly reassess and redefine their IT requirements and infrastructure – accessibility, connectivity and security will be the most crucial factors for IT divisions. Already today, most employees require remote access to the company’s Intranet. This increase in mobile connectivity goes along with an urgent requirement for simpler and more straightforward mobile printing.

To give an example, the answers given by knowledge workers in Germany as part of a survey as far back as 2010 on mobility indicated printing from mobile devices as an essential demand.

InfoTrend found that, excluding the thirty-odd percent of users who did not have an immediate requirement, the majority would have printed from their mobile devices, had they not lacked access to a suitable printer (more than 40%) or encountered some other technical obstacle.

An insight into the capabilities on offer that MJ Flood, in partnership with its global partner Konica Minolta, are providing the Irish market are highlighted in the 6 trends below:

Trend #1: Cloud and Mobile Printing: To meet the demands of the increasing mobile workforce, professional cloud and mobile printing applications provide reliable secure printing, offer flexible job submission – such as native printing from iOS devices via AirPrint – and support a choice of mobile devices as part of an organisation’s BYOD policy. They also facilitate accounting and charging, and naturally offer support for different file formats and output settings.

Trend #2: BYOD drives Cloud Computing: The trend of an increasing mobile workforce is reinforced by another emerging trend among employees, namely the desire to use their own smart devices for work. “Bring your own device” – or BYOD – seems to have benefits for both workers and employers: Employees can choose preferred, familiar devices while companies face lower upfront equipment expenses. Trends like BYOD will accelerate the interaction of technologies/devices/platforms: in the immediate future any combination of devices and technologies, for example of Apple devices, mobile phones, copier device panels, and tablet PCs, is imaginable. With such extensive interaction, knowledge workers benefit from virtually unlimited flexibility and freedom of access, which in turn supports their unimpaired mobility.

Trend #3: Cross-platform mobile developments: A perfect example for such functionality is the Konica Minolta “Bizhub Marketplace” platform, a new and easy way to browse and download apps that have been designed specifically to enhance the functionality of the multifunction printer. Similar to apps used on mobile devices but are specific to customers’ business needs. With the bizhub MarketPlace, MJ Flood customers can flexibly deploy applications without any on-site support.

Trend #4: “Big Data”: Various aspects make the explosion of content a real challenge for businesses. With the rapid growth of unstructured corporate content, enterprises face increasing difficulties in managing documents and electronic information. It is important to bear in mind that most regulatory and legal compliance processes concern printed as well as electronic documents. Knowledge workers possibly spend up to 50% of their time looking for content. But if more than 30 minutes are needed to find a document, this has the same negative effect as not having it at all. 90% of all corporate information assets are in documents; but 7.5% of all documents are lost. Folder and document structures are often ineffective and therefore related to document chaos. The resulting danger is that different employees might be working with different document versions so that error-less updating becomes impossible.

Trend #5: Document Capture and Management: The past 15 years has seen the empirical progress of Document Management from simple departmental scanning to full automated Procure to Pay (P2P) solutions. However, allied to implementations as large as this is the risk of implementations with deliverables that possibly stray from the customers’ original key requirements. This risk has forced organisations that need to automate their internal manual, paper processing to seek departmental or point solutions to resolve fundamental processing challenges.

MJ Flood has recognised this market gap and introduced a bespoke portfolio of Enterprise Content Management and eDiscovery solutions. Each one provides integration with typical existing Managed Print Implementations.

These are:
– Document capture
– Manage documents – apply internal business rules to an automated function
– Store and Archive – smart solutions for storing documents
– eDiscovery – forensically search for all internal electronic data located in email, shared folders and every internal software solution in one search portal

Trend #6: Data and Information Security: The above outlined trends and developments raise important concerns regarding the security and protection of corporate data and sensitive information. With the transmission of extensive amounts of critical and confidential data via the Internet, both general data leakage as well as cybercrime are major concerns on corporate as well as personal level. More so than ever, enterprises have to look for all-encompassing security functionality in their IT equipment to reliably protect against loss and theft of sensitive corporate information.

For example, in any enterprise environment, the day-to-day use of copying, print, scan and fax systems, as the elementary components of work processes and workflows, makes multifunction printers indispensable at many levels.

MJ Flood’s standard security features provide print security, device access control, document security, and data leakage prevention.

A major recent development in managed document services is outsourcing services that extend to managing customer’s on-site document facilities, including the print room, the mail room, scanning and archiving. Highly skilled Ricoh staff can be utilised on the customer’s premises to manage a wide range of activities. Whether it’s to deal with workflows such as invoices in the finance department, HR records, or the integration of the print fleet with the print or mail room, outsourcing to Ricoh and its partners gives customers the opportunity to focus on growing their own business and revenues. Contact Ricoh Ireland or any of its channel partners to learn how you can optimise your print, document and workflow needs.

It’s fast to get up and running with easy USB installation. You can also keep your network out of it. Both wireless direct and touch-to-print technologies use a peer-to-peer connection, allowing mobile users to print without accessing the company network. Business information is safeguarded at all times as print files are sent using 128-bit encryption.

HP has been working closely with leading manufacturers of mobile devices to integrate printing into popular operating systems. In fact, HP is the only print vendor developing embedded print functionality for Apple iOS, Samsung Android, and Windows 8, which means in most cases, you won’t have to download an app.

For Irish organisations looking to upgrade their print infrastructures it’s essential that they work with an experienced and highly accredited service provider that understands their evolving print, document and workflow requirements. As Ireland’s first and only HP Platinum Partner for printing and computing, Datapac is perfectly positioned to help Irish businesses in this increasingly complex environment.
Datapac’s print offerings are highly flexible and tailored to each customer’s unique set of needs. With more than thirty years of print experience in Ireland and successful partnerships with world-leading vendors such as HP and Safecom, Datapac is the obvious choice to manage, improve and optimise your print infrastructure.