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Opinion
Tony Lomax, Product Marketing Manager, Lexmark
UK & Ireland explains why it is important for
businesses to adapt to mobile solutions
Economic uncertainty, coupled with
continuous technological innovation,
makes this a particularly challenging
time for business. Volatility has now
become a way of life. Companies
face a wide range of challenges as
they strive to find growth and stay
competitive. From improving operational
effectiveness to expanding into new
markets, it is clearly of vital importance
that businesses operate as efficiently
as possible.
From an IT perspective, challenges such
as delivering the same level of service for
less, keeping up with new systems and
improving information management are
key issues that keep those in the industry
awake at night.
But, if done correctly, it is exactly these
innovations that will help IT departments
to make efficiencies and simplify business
processes.
Alongside cloud and big data adoption,
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies
are central to business strategy and
innovation. Enterprises now require
end-to-end solutions to help them
manage the content that flows through
their organisations, with seamless
interoperability and smart mobile
technology.
A major challenge today is the
big increase in the amount of data
generated, much of it unstructured.
Employees now spend a great deal of
their time managing documents and
unstructured data in e-mails, memos,
notes from call centres and support
operations, news, invoices, PDFs, audio
and video files and even Tweets.
Clearly, such data can be of enormous
value to a business and will need to be
incorporated into workflows and made
accessible for employees to view at
some point in the future. Transforming
this information into structured and
actionable intelligence is essential for
creating valuable, meaningful data.
Most organisations already have
business process management in place.
A priority, moving forward, will be to index
and direct this unstructured data to
where it needs to be, ultimately saving
time and increasing productivity.
BYOD the rule
As the adoption of
mobile gathers pace,
BYOD is becoming
common practice in the workplace. It is
now the rule rather than the exception.
Whether you’re an administrator or an
end user, it can’t be ignored when four
out of five companies allow employees
to use their personal mobile devices on
the job.
Mobile capture business applications
let you take advantage of the extra
computing power provided by BYOD
and jump-start workflows instantly by
capturing, retrieving and sending critical
data anywhere, not just at your desk.
Workflows to optimise paper or electronic
movement and management of data can
be designed for smart phones, tablets
and the smart touch screen interfaces of
multifunction products. Today, solutions
can be developed for customers in a
matter of days, not weeks or months.
Everyday operational tasks like
insurance claims processing, retail store
incident reporting or new client account
opening can be streamlined by leveraging
the latest technologies available for
smart mobile and MFPs.
Innovations such as these show
where the future lies and underline the
pivotal role that mobile technologies
are set to play. It is vital that businesses
embrace their potential and see mobile
devices not just as communication tools,
but as valuable commodities that can
bring efficiencies and innovations to the
business process. The future of mobile is
the future of everything.
The future is here,
the future is mobile
Top 10 Tips
Cortado’s Top Tips for reducing
enterprise print costs
1
Analyse costs.
Implement appropriate
tracking tools, or solutions with
integrated tracking, to provide an
overview of device utilisation, then
analyse the costs.
2
. Apply cost-saving printer settings as
default.
Duplex or draft-quality printouts
significantly reduce paper and toner
costs.
3
. Introduce pull printing.
Pull printing,
or user-authenticated initiation of print
jobs at the printer, increases security
and lowers the cost of printing by up to
20%.
4
. Reduce administration costs
for printer driver management.
Centralising printer drivers on a print
server and introducing virtual printer
drivers reduces effort and costs to a
minimum.
5
. Reduce help desk calls with common
print dialogs.
Common print dialogs
and a consistent interface for all
printers reduce help desk calls and
eliminate the need for additional
training for users.
6
. Compress print data.
Print data places
a strain on both CPUs and networks.
This can be reduced significantly
by implementing a solution that
compresses print data.
7
. Reduce hardware costs.
Hardware
costs can be cut by implementing
solutions that are not bound to specific
hardware manufacturers and models.
8
. Lower support costs and implement
print servers.
A print management
system with printer status indicators
allows IT to act proactively, replacing
toner in time before users can no
longer print, thus avoiding a loss in
productivity. Introducing a print server
simplifies the management and
maintenance of systems.
9
. Use digital printouts.
Often,
documents such as flight check-in
details are only needed as digital
printouts for reading on a tablet or
smartphone. Introducing the potential
to print documents digitally to another
device reduces waste and cost and has
a positive impact on the environment.
10
. Move printing to the cloud.
Full
migration of printing services to the
cloud is growing in popularity as a way
to reduce costs in the complex area of
printing.
Printing digitally
to a smartphone
or tablet saves
time and money