BULLETIN 01732 759725 4 The hybrid working gap New research from Canon Europe shows there is a disconnect between IT managers’ and end-users’ technology experiences when it comes to hybrid working. 78% of IT decisionmakers (ITDMs) believe their company provides the right technology to enable people to work from home, but one in five end-users are still having to provide their own equipment and are struggling to get remote IT support. Equipping new workspaces has been a major challenge for IT teams. Accessibility, collaboration and integration are among the biggest pain points when transitioning to a hybrid model, with 71% of ITDMs claiming that solutions to support hybrid practices are incompatible with their legacy infrastructure. Employees’ top issues with hybrid working concern business processes. Two in five are facing difficulties with approval processes, signing documents digitally and escalating admin, while 41% are struggling to access physical or digital documents when working out of the office. As a result, 37% of respondents report having to visit the office to print, pick up, or sign documents in person. The research revealed that most regular help desk calls from remote workers are about issues accessing files remotely (43%) and having trouble sharing and collaborating with others (36%). On top of these software demands, IT teams are also experiencing high demand for remote hardware assistance, with over half (56%) receiving requests for printer/ scanner support in the home and 33% for personal devices. Responding to these issues, sourcing, and implementing the right technology for this new environment is proving to be difficult for IT teams. Just over three quarters (76%) of IT teams say they have found sourcing technologies from multiple vendors challenging. In the event of an issue, 71% must contact multiple vendors for a solution, which means problems can take significantly longer to resolve in a hybrid setting. With this in mind, the appeal of a single vendor solution for print and document management is significant for companies embracing hybrid working. The majority of ITDMs (81%) agree their organisation would benefit from technologies provided by a single vendor that are compatible with each other and open to integration. www.canon-europe.com Print features heavily in organisations’ overall cloud strategy The Digital Workspace Ecosystem Alliance (DWEA), a consortium of technology leaders dedicated to helping organisations enable secure productivity for all of their people, has released the results of its 2023 ‘State of the Digital Workspace’ survey. The study, which surveyed 2,660 digital workspace professionals globally, found that the benefits of moving print to the cloud are now clearer than ever in IT leaders' minds. The findings clearly show that the cloudification of print is an integral part of organisations’ digital workspace strategies. An overwhelming majority (93.1%), of respondents said that their cloud strategy involved cloud printing. David Jenkins, CEO at directprint.io, a founding member of the Digital Workspace Ecosystem Alliance (DWEA) said: “It’s clear that print remains an indispensable part of many workflows. 97% of the organisations surveyed said they manage printing/scanning in-house. So, it’s reassuring to see that moving print to the cloud now features heavily in organisations’ overall cloud strategies.” Hybrid working is here to stay for 58% of organisations, which brings the issue of how best to support a hybrid and remote workforce to the fore. In remote and hybrid environments, the complexity of network printing increases exponentially so it’s not surprising that managing printing/scanning at remote locations because of a hybrid workforce was cited as the top challenge for over half (53.5%), of respondents. “People want to print wherever they are - and from multiple devices - and that’s where cloud print management comes into its own,” Jenkins said. “With features such as Edge Print, end-users can print on their phone, tablet, Chromebook, PC and any other web-connected device – whether they’re at home, on a guest network, or even between offices.” Driver management (31.1%) and supporting end-users’ (22.1%) printing and scanning needs in the digital workspace are two further challenges survey participants ranked highly. “Cloud print management platforms such as directprint.io combine a unique universal driver and cloud administration platform to provide granular print access control to administrators, simplify printer provisioning and ongoing management,” Jenkins explained. The commitment to long-term hybrid work has accelerated the need to move print management to the cloud and it’s clear that organisations are reaping the reward. After making the switch to cloud print management, 54.6% of survey respondents said their IT teams were either spending less time on print-related support or enjoying a combination of a superior print experience, lower costs and less time investment. Jenkins continued: “The business case for migrating print management to the cloud is compelling. IT teams spend less time supporting print; end-users benefit from a better print experience; and organisations save money on print-related costs. “Cloud services are billed and consumed as-a-service - freeing up CapEx budgets to be allocated elsewhere. Plus, a subscriptionbased pricing model is predictable and flexible, allowing organisations to scale up or down in line with their business needs,” he concluded. www.directprint.io David Jenkins
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