Most people don’t think about the back end costs associated with printing. Many workers have the mindset that once you purchase a piece of printing equipment, then prints are basically free from that point on. This couldn’t be further from the truth and the inability to track these costs exacerbates the issue. With a print management program, your business will be able to recover wasteful spending through these steps:

• Track and monitor current printing practices around the office
• Identify wasteful processes, equipment and sources of unnecessary spend
• Optimize printing practices, equipment and systems to improve efficiency and reduce overall costs
• Continued management and optimization to improve processes and keep costs low

A print management program will take your company through these steps so that your business can begin to recover lost printing and document costs. Not only will the program help you recover lost costs, but it will also improve document workflow, reduce IT support issues and improve data security.

With all of these benefits, your business has nothing to lose and everything to gain from considering a print management program. Contact us today to get started recovering your printing costs!

We’re Using Way More Paper Than We Ever Have Before

Apparently human beings are still Tree Enemy Number One, sneaking past beavers and termites. In fact, if you are reading this in America, you personally killed 5.57 40-foot trees last year thanks to all of your paper usage. But don’t feel too bad: Belgians consumed a whopping 8.5 trees per person, which is like taking four Rockefeller Center Christmas trees and setting them on fire.

According to The Economist, worldwide paper consumption has increased by half in the last 30 years, a puzzling development for an era when “paperless” and “green” are as buzzy as words can get. You’d think that with the rise of computers, iPads and smartphones that paper consumption would shrink, but apparently humans are still ripping down spruces and pines at an alarming rate. So save a tree—buy a Kindle. [The Economist]

Why the Demise of Print Media Is Bad for Humanity

By Tony Bradley, PCWorld

In case you haven’t heard–after 244 years as the foremost authority among printed reference material–Encyclopaedia Britannica is officially out of the encyclopedia printing business. The end of the print edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica is indicative of a larger trend from print to digital that yields a variety of tremendous benefits. Ultimately, though, the demise of print media may be bad for humanity as a whole.

• The Upside

Personally, I’m a huge fan of digital media. First of all, it is the primary means by which I make a living. Secondly, as a consumer I prefer to buy my books in digital format, and I prefer to read my news digitally.

A digital encyclopedia has many benefits, but its lack of permanence is a serious issue.Digital media is faster. As quickly as a writer such as myself can turn words into bits and bytes, they can be instantly available around the world.

Digital media is cheaper financially and ecologically as well. Print media requires trees to be cut, paper to be produced, material to be printed, and the resulting product to be shipped and distributed. It takes natural resources, energy, and fuel that cost money and damage the Earth.

With digital media, simply push a button and the material is live. The costs involved are basically the same whether it is read by 10 people, or 10 million.

I appreciate that I can carry an entire library in a tablet or e-reader that is thinner than most magazines, and weighs next to nothing. Kids can carry text books without lugging around a 50-pound backpack, and people can get new reading material in seconds from virtually anywhere.

There is a huge downside, though: Digital media doesn’t have the permanence of print media.

Unlocking History

The Rosetta Stone is the famous artifact that helped experts unlock the code to understanding ancient Egyption hieroglyphs. It contains the same script written in three different languages–one of which is Ancient Greek. Because we already understood Ancient Greek, experts were able to cross-reference the two and decipher the hieroglyphs.

The Rosetta Stone represents the ancient equivalent of print media. Without a physical, written text, much of history may be lost forever.

Rewriting History

What’s worse than losing history? Changing it. Printed material represents a moment in time. We can travel through time through the written word and learn about events, discoveries, triumphs, and tragedies from accounts written hundreds or thousands of years ago.

With digital media, that may not be so easy. First of all, the media itself evolves rapidly. The written word on stone or paper has existed relatively unchanged for millennia, but if you stored a digital document on a 5.25 inch floppy disk twenty-five years ago it would be a challenge to access it today.

Even if you can access archived digital media, it is impermanent. I may have written something five years ago about how Palm Pilot would take over the world and crush Apple and Microsoft (I didn’t, but I could have). I could go online today, though, and modify such an article to instead predict the catastrophic demise of the once great company.

What about history itself? History is somewhat flawed in the first place because it is generally written by the victors. The history of the United States as it is recorded and taught probably differs significantly from the version you might have if it were written by surviving members of the Mohican or Cherokee tribes.

Print media gives us a snapshot that can’t be undone. Even if subsequent histories are rewritten, the original texts still reveal a different truth. If our only source of written history is digital, though, it can be altered to fit the whims or ruling political agenda of the day, and basically can never be fully trusted.

I love Wikipedia and use it frequently as a resource. I am also conscious, though, that the information it contains could be wrong, and is subject to change. The information printed in Encyclopaedia Britannica is–or at least was–not subject to such arbitrary or capricious alteration.

I am a huge fan of digital media and digital reference sources. I don’t really lament the demise of Encyclopaedia Britannica because I see its transition to digital as an evolution rather than an ending.

But, I am concerned about the lack of permanence, and the loss of the point-in-time snapshot that physical print media provides. As a part of the shift from print to digital media, we also need some method of marking the moment in time and archiving it with some permanence–like cached pages on a Google search, but for the Internet as a whole and all it contains.

What do you think? Is the decline in print media with the transition to digital media a good thing? Are there solutions out there to address the lack of permanence?

Recover Costs in Your Printing Practices

Most people don’t think about the back end costs associated with printing. Many workers have the mindset that once you purchase a piece of printing equipment, then prints are basically free from that point on. This couldn’t be further from the truth and the inability to track these costs exacerbates the issue. With a print management program, your business will be able to recover wasteful spending through these steps:

• Track and monitor current printing practices around the office
• Identify wasteful processes, equipment and sources of unnecessary spend
• Optimise printing practices, equipment and systems to improve efficiency and reduce overall costs
• Continued management and optimisation to improve processes and keep costs low

A print management program will take your company through these steps so that your business can begin to recover lost printing and document costs. Not only will the program help you recover lost costs, but it will also improve document workflow, reduce IT support issues and improve data security.

With all of these benefits, your business has nothing to lose and everything to gain from considering a print management program. Contact us today to get started recovering your printing costs! (925) 521-9110.

Use the Photo Capabilities on Your Multifunction Device

If your business is still using personal photo printers, then you can save a significant amount of time and potentially money through using a color multifunction device. If your business already owns a color multifunction device, then it only makes sense to utilize that piece of equipment to improve your processes. Here are just a few of the reasons why printing photos through your multifunction device can benefit you.

• A multifunction device is multiple times faster when printing photographs and can maintain the same level of print quality.
• With a multifunction device, you have far more sizing options. You can print many different sizes up to a regular 8.5 x 11 letter size while with a photo printer, you will be restricted to select sizes, and sometimes only 4 x 6.
• You don’t need another printing device. Multifunction devices can handle other printing jobs and can serve multiple purposes.
• With a multifunction device, you can scan photos or pictures directly into your computer and then store or distribute them as you please.

With multifunction devices being very sophisticated these days, it only makes sense to optimize your business equipment to fit your needs. To hear more about the power of multifunction devices and how they can serve many purposes in your business, contact us today!

Gartner Says Personal Cloud Will Replace the PC by 2014

• Mar 13, 2012

STAMFORD, Conn. – The reign of the personal computer as the sole corporate access device is coming to a close, and by 2014, the personal cloud will replace the personal computer at the center of users’ digital lives, according to Gartner, Inc.

Gartner analysts said the personal cloud will begin a new era that will provide users with a new level of flexibility with the devices they use for daily activities, while leveraging the strengths of each device, ultimately enabling new levels of user satisfaction and productivity. However, it will require enterprises to fundamentally rethink how they deliver applications and services to users.

“Major trends in client computing have shifted the market away from a focus on personal computers to a broader device perspective that includes smartphones, tablets and other consumer devices,” said Steve Kleynhans, research vice president at Gartner. “Emerging cloud services will become the glue that connects the web of devices that users choose to access during the different aspects of their daily life.”

The past two years have been a whirlwind in the client computing space, leaving many enterprises asking what comes next and what the environment will look like in five years.

“Many call this era the post-PC era, but it isn’t really about being ‘after’ the PC, but rather about a new style of personal computing that frees individuals to use computing in fundamentally new ways to improve multiple aspects of their work and personal lives,” Kleynhans said.

Several driving forces are combining to create this new era. These megatrends have roots that extend back through the past decade but are aligning in a new way.

Megatrend No. 1: Consumerization — You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet
Gartner has discussed the consumerization of IT for the better part of a decade, and has seen the impact of it across various aspects of the corporate IT world. However, much of this has simply been a precursor to the major wave that is starting to take hold across all aspects of information technology as several key factors come together:

• Users are more technologically savvy and have very different expectations of technology.
• The Internet and social media have empowered and emboldened users.
• The rise of powerful, affordable mobile devices changes the equation for users.
• Users have become innovators.
• Through the democratization of technology, users of all types and status within organizations can now have similar technology available to them.

Megatrend No. 2: Virtualization — Changing How the Game Is Played
Virtualization has improved flexibility and increased the options for how IT organizations can implement client environments. Virtualization has, to some extent, freed applications from the peculiarities of individual devices, operating systems or even processor architectures. Virtualization provides a way to move the legacy of applications and processes developed in the PC era forward into the new emerging world. This provides low-power devices access to much-greater processing power, thus expanding their utility and increasing the reach of processor-intensive applications.

Megatrend No. 3: “App-ification” — From Applications to Apps
When the way that applications are designed, delivered and consumed by users changes, it has a dramatic impact on all other aspects of the market. These changes will have a profound impact on how applications are written and managed in corporate environments. They also raise the prospect of greater cross-platform portability as small user experience (UX) apps are used to adjust a server- or cloud-resident application to the unique characteristics of a specific device or scenario. One application can now be exposed in multiple ways and used in varying situations by the user.

Megatrend No. 4: The Ever-Available Self-Service Cloud
The advent of the cloud for servicing individual users opens a whole new level of opportunity. Every user can now have a scalable and nearly infinite set of resources available for whatever they need to do. The impacts for IT infrastructures are stunning, but when this is applied to the individual, there are some specific benefits that emerge. Users’ digital activities are far more self-directed than ever before. Users demand to make their own choices about applications, services and content, selecting from a nearly limitless collection on the Internet. This encourages a culture of self-service that users expect in all aspects of their digital experience. Users can now store their virtual workspace or digital personality online.

Megatrend No. 5: The Mobility Shift — Wherever and Whenever You Want
Today, mobile devices combined with the cloud can fulfill most computing tasks, and any tradeoffs are outweighed in the minds of the user by the convenience and flexibility provided by the mobile devices. The emergence of more-natural user interface experiences is making mobility practical. Touch- and gesture-based user experiences, coupled with speech and contextual awareness, are enabling rich interaction with devices and a much greater level of freedom. At any point in time, and depending on the scenario, any given device will take on the role of the user’s primary device — the one at the center of the user’s constellation of devices.

“The combination of these megatrends, coupled with advances in new enabling technologies, is ushering in the era of the personal cloud,” said Mr. Kleynhans. “In this new world, the specifics of devices will become less important for the organization to worry about. Users will use a collection of devices, with the PC remaining one of many options, but no one device will be the primary hub. Rather, the personal cloud will take on that role. Access to the cloud and the content stored or shared in the cloud will be managed and secured, rather than solely focusing on the device itself.”

Samsung Makes the New iPad’s Screen Because No One Else Could (Updated)

Apple has exacting demands when it comes to quality control, and few things need to hit harder on quality than the retina screen on the new iPad. According to Bloomberg, the only company that was able to make the screens up to Apple standards was Samsung. You know, the company Apple’s been trying to sue into the ground for months and months. Awkward.

Bloomberg says that LG and Sharp both failed to meet Apple’s quality control standards, leaving Samsung as the lone manufacturer for the screen, at least at first. Both companies are set to start producing iPad screens for this generation as early as April, provided they can catch up to Samsung on quality.

Samsung also makes Apple’s new A5X chip, which means it’s manufacturing two of the biggest upgrades to the iPad this year. Which is very telling, considering how acrimonious things have been between it and Apple lately. They fight over everything. Samsung’s been making iPhone components since forever, but this is a continuation in spite of all the fighting. Either way, nice to see that both are willing to bury the hatchet to make beautiful iPads together.

A few decades ago, digital communications promised to sound the death knell for printing and the paperless office was predicted to be just a matter of time. Yet the paperless office has failed to materialize, with email and the internet actually leading to more printed documents. The popularity of smartphones and tablets in the workplace is now leading to similar warnings of less printing, with iPads and other tablets in particular expected to displace the printed page. However, Quocirca believes that this supposed threat to printing actually opens a new landscape of opportunity to printer vendors – but only if they can provide simple, reliable and secure ways to print from mobile devices.

Undeniably, the consumer-isaton of IT is having a profound impact on the use of smartphones and tablets in the workplace. Today’s dynamic and mobile workforce is now relying on personal devices in their professional lives and expect anytime, anywhere access to corporate systems – including printing. Even in this era of smartphones and tablets, businesses continue to rely on printing – 75% of 125 enterprise respondents in a recent Quocirca survey indicated printing as playing an important role in supporting business activities. There is certainly an appetite for printing from mobile devices with 55% of respondents indicating that employees would like to be able to print from their mobile devices. Around 25% are already investigating mobile print solutions.

Given the diversity of mobile platforms and printer hardware, it is unsurprising that the mobile printing market is fragmented, characterized by an array of hardware, software and cloud-based services. Not only is the demand for mobile printing an opportunity for more hardware sales – HP, for instance, shipped over 15 million web-enabled ePrint printers in 2011 – but it also enables vendors to capture pages as they shift from the desktop to the mobile device. In many cases these are ‘high value’ color pages that generate additional revenue opportunities.

Mobile printing usage scenarios can be broadly categorized as either public printing/guest printing services or printing across a corporate network. Public/guest printing covers ‘hot-spots’ such as hotels, business centers or airports that offer Wi-Fi connectivity, web access and print and copy services. Mobile workers can discover printers and use universal print drivers, web-based means of submitting print jobs or send them as an email attachment from their mobile devices. Public print locations should require an authentication code before users can release a print job from a designated printer to ensure that print jobs are not mislaid or stolen by passing employees or members of the public.

Printing from any device to any printer or MFP across a corporate network promotes user mobility across company locations. Printing may be direct from a mobile device or application, via an email attachment to a registered printer or through a web browser, using a public or private cloud. When deployed in the enterprise, it is critical that mobile print solutions are vendor-agnostic, use a private cloud approach and employ encryption and authentication methods to ensure document security and privacy.

The mobile printing ecosystem is broadly populated by printer/copier manufacturers and independent software vendors (ISVs).Hardware manufacturers may typically offer a mobile printing portfolio that comprises hardware, software and services. Printers may be cloud or web-enabled. This allows devices to be registered for these vendors’ respective cloud printing services.

Most of the hardware-centric mobile print solutions are brand-specific, although some do offer multivendor support. Hardware manufacturers also offer mobile printing services as part of their managed print services (MPS) portfolio, enabling organizations to manage and track printing across both desktop and mobile environments. However, Canon’s uniFLOW platform, in particular, is currently the only integrated print management platform that tracks and reports on both desktop and mobile printing.

ISVs such as EFI, Cortado and PrinterOn all offer vendor-agnostic mobile print solutions. Solutions such as EFI’s PrintMe Mobile are particularly suitable for organizations operating a mixed fleet, avoiding the need to implement multiple solutions for each mobile platform and printer or MFP. In many cases, hardware vendors will partner with ISVs to deliver multivendor support where appropriate.

Currently the only mobile OS platform to offer direct printing support is Apple’s AirPrint. This offers wireless printing from iPad, iPhone (3GS or later) or iPod touch (3rd generation or later) devices to AirPrint-enabled devices. These include selected printers from Brother, Canon, Epson, HP and Lexmark. Google Cloud Print, currently in beta, offers printing from smartphones or tablets with Gmail for mobile, Google Docs for mobile and other supported apps to cloud-enabled printers.

Given the lack of standardization around mobile printing, organizations are faced with a challenging task in navigating the range of solutions on offer. Whilst smartphones and tablets may diminish the need for a certain amount of printing, it is not going to eradicate it. Therefore, organizations should offer employees mobile printing capabilities that enable them to remain productive, whilst also ensuring mobile printing is tracked and secured in the same way as desktop printing. Quocirca believes that mobile printing will become a crucial part of an overall enterprise print strategy as pages gradually shift from the desktop to the mobile device.

Read more at http://www.quocirca.com/media/reports/012012/653/The%20mobile%20print%20enterprise%20Public%20Excerpt%20Jan%202012.pdf

MPS Insights > Insights & Blogs > Making cents out of data

By: Jennifer Shutwell  |  March 8th, 2012  |  Insights & Blogs

By: Jennifer Shutwell & Ken Stewart, Photizo Group

While today’s MPS tools may not be perfect, today’s technology platforms are far better than those of five or 10 years ago. Automating and streamlining much of the routine work in the process of selling, fulfilling and billing is on everyone’s mind. Simply put, delivering profitable MPS is about providing effective services with a little mystery. This is the value of combining technology, people and processes.

We’ve got SFA, CRM and assessment tools to help us with selling. We’ve got RMM, PSA and ERP software platforms to help us with fulfilling and billing. Mix it all together and you’ve got a lot of data at your fingertips. But what’s helping us make sense of all the information flowing out of these systems — let alone put it in the context of our customers’ needs?

Customers and executives don’t care about the particulars of how all the magic happens as much as they care about repeatable and reliable results — and rightly so. As MPS marches on to increased rates of adoption worldwide, most providers are only now coming to realize the need for advanced capabilities that analyze, understand, connect and leverage the overwhelming number of data points coming at them. After all, managing 20 customers producing 500,000 pages can offer a decent margin for error. Trying to manage 2,000 customers with 50 million pages the same way doesn’t make sense.

Generally speaking, customer satisfaction is one of the key factors with growth in business through attraction, retention and expansion. As technology continues to transform, it is offering you new ways of satisfying your customer. If you are still doing the same thing you were 24 months ago, then it’s likely you’ve fallen behind and could be at risk of losing your customer to your competitor. To harness the horsepower of your infrastructure, ensure competitive advantage and operate a profitable business, you need to refresh and reconnect technology, people and processes in new and meaningful ways.

You might think of your MPS tools like building blocks. They come in different shapes and sizes and do different things. Business intelligence (BI) capabilities provide the cement to connect these blocks together, as well as help you glean where there are structural problems and opportunities to expand. Business intelligence is more than just reporting and a few rules. These tools are designed to connect your different platforms together and allow you to add human-like decision-making capabilities. This ability to glean insight into your customer’s needs and desires is what helps you have fact-based conversations with your customers about your future together.

The opportunity with BI is that once it’s developed utilizing critical capital, time and domain expertise, it is there, working for you and your customers 24/7. As the MPS market has matured, firms like Supplies Network and ECi Software (specifically the former Digital Gateway) have been investing in highly flexible and comprehensive additions to their portfolio. They have simultaneously expanded their partner and customer footprint. In building critical mass, these firms are coupling the benefits of basic MPS toolsets to advanced BI suites. This can significantly improve your ability to make thousands of decisions in a much smaller amount of time and accurately predict future trends that will impact your business.

Practical Advice

Before you run off and buy more software tools, here is some practical advice:

Knowledge: Know which questions need answers and which questions aren’t important. If you get stuck, ask some trusted customers if you can live in their shoes for a day. By simply observing the challenges they have, you’ll learn a lot about what you should be providing them.

People: Engage your team to help you understand their struggles and frustrations in serving your customers. What you’ll often find is that your team has gotten so focused on the routine of doing the work that this line of question will give them pause.

Partners: Reach out to your current partners and ask them what they are seeing in your industry and which of their customers really stand out in their mind.

Metrics: Once you know what the problems are, then you can figure out how you want to measure if you are successfully solving them.

Whether you are just beginning your MPS program, or if MPS has been a part of your customer-story for a long time, how well you turn your information into income will be the deciding factor between the winners and losers in 2012.

With dreams of becoming a stockbroker as I graduated college, my first job out was selling copiers.  Now almost two decades later, I still remember the 3-plus hour drive to Chicago in the dead wet heat of August.
No air conditioning.
When I was a mile or so away, I stopped at a McDonald’s, changed into my best professional looking dress and arrived looking as fresh as I could.
I passed.  The company offered the job with a start date in two weeks.  (Thank you Larry) I left barely knowing what I would be selling, and I recall being impressed that it was ISO9000 Certified.  The second day on the job I realized I was selling copiers.  Who says, “when I grow up I want to sell copiers?”  No one.  At the time, I didn’t even know they existed.
-XXX-
Now we know.  You know, I know, we all know thanks to the internet and its devices.
Forgetting about being a stockbroker, I fell in love with the emergence and convergence of technology.  The machines went from single function to multi-function, analog to digital, mono to color, desktop to print shop, to faster and faster, and of course the unruly state of unmanaged and my all time favorite, managed.  Endless combinations to augment the way businesses communicated with people and paper.
Recently industry leaders reported continued decline.  The reality of the paperless office is being birthed as iPads and other tablets increasingly grab hold of our attention, ability to share and communicate in ways that paper just can’t compare.

In a decline, there is no business as usual and no waiting for the cream to rise to the top.  Even if cream rises, some cream will be disregarded, while other cream will be highly regarded and made into something new.  Having gone through waves of change, here are some things I learned with decline:
1. Face Reality
Face what’s true, and stop the hype inside and outside your company, life, business, and relationships.  Truth is the new sustainability model.  The numbers, trends, changes, and directions tell stories. See and listen to them, they’re speaking to you. There is no bail-out.
2. Debt
Reduce and minimize dependency on new debt.  Eliminate as much debt, short-term, long-term, it doesn’t matter.  Things will never be as they used to be and debt is not a foundation for sustainable growth.  Cash and cash flow is king.
3. Insource
Be organic in your redoing.  Understand core competencies, explore, and innovate.  Juicy, vibrant, integress people create interest.  The new game is interdependence not co-dependence.
4. Be open and have secrets too
Be naked and birth something new.  Transparency, openness and vulnerability builds trust.  Know when and what to keep secret.
5. Downsize and Re-build
In the midst of decline, less is more.  Let the outer fringe go.  Solidify the center, core and foundation all at the same time.
6. Clear and committed
Missing or shattered soul…purpose?  Work to retrieve.  Replace ego maniac with ego clarity.
7. Simplify and reduce
In a complex world, its time to untangle and integrate.  Do not hang on to old former names, things, times, or places. Migrate to what is now.  Swiftly.  No wasted time on the fence of what you are going to do.  Do it.  And one of my favorites…go without a few things, you’ll appreciate them more on the return.
8. Be Inside
Bring people together frequently.  Forget about mobility, teleworking, and reducing real estate space and increase bringing people together face to face.  Create/build a close knit community, culture, vibe and remember your strengths in times of weakness.  Remember the heart of the mission statement and what it feels like to be unique, valued and valuable.

9. See People

Unfreeze aspects of the travel allowance and meet people face to face, hands…etc. 

10. No Fear
Root your vibe in courage and faith, not fear.
Incorporating principles like these into your business may help you shift the slope, slow the decline, and make the turn back up again.

by Jennifer Shutwell

Shutwell serves as a senior consultant with Photizo, providing research, consultation and advising services. She has 18 years of experience in transforming management and operations of centralized and decentralized imaging and printing environments of large accounts with IKON Office Solutions, Hewlett-Packard, Konica Minolta and, most recently, Canon Business Solutions.