The Datamax Thinking Blog

Educating, collaborating, and sparking ideas for maximizing the technology that matters.


6 Rules for Diving Deep Into Your Print Environment

Developing a vision, and implementing it with strategically-placed solutions, will guide your exploration deep into the depths of your entire fleet of devices, and can lead to exhilarating new discoveries...including a dramatically more breathable bottom line. 

“Plan your Dive. Dive Your Plan."

Descending steadily toward the ocean floor, entering the wilderness of the deep sea and the marine life that inhabits it can be exhilarating... life changing. Properly planning and executing your dive under a specific set of rules and checklists helps you maintain control over your equipment – and your environment. It ensures a successful dive.

Topics: Printing Document Security Print Management Managed Print Services

Is Your IT Security Strategy 'All-Inclusive?'

Businesses often throw money and technology at the problem: firewalls, content filters, encrypted data and email, antivirus and anti-malware tools. But a more all-inclusive approach covers much more ground than just hardware. 

The nerves are shot. The internal screams of frustration finally slipped out across the salesroom floor. You need a vacation. And visiting an all-inclusive resort provides the ultimate peace of mind.

Topics: Network Management Network Security

Get Employees On Board with Copier Fleet or IT Onboarding Process

In working with your partner, how successful is implementation of new technology? Is there a Change Management Methodology that gets every employee on board safely? Or just a train wreck? 

Woodrow Wilson once famously said, “if you want to make enemies, try to change something.”

Funny, but for IT managers or business owners implementing an MFP fleet or IT-related onboarding process, perhaps a little too close for comfort.

Topics: Business Problems Productivity Tips and Tools Network Management Partnering Print Management

No Production Print Job Left Behind: Is That the Case With You?

Production printers, in short, need to make-ready for the long print run. But with a well-vetted partner, print operators and print executives alike can exhale a little deeper, breathe a little easier.

The air inside production print rooms continues to get thinner.

When the challenges arise that come with quicker turnarounds and increasing client demands, in-plants, quick print shops and commercial printers find it harder to breathe easy in the press room. Common scenarios...

Topics: Color Printing Office Equipment Production Print Print Management

Managing Workflow Feel Like Herding Cats? Consider a Technology Assessment

A thorough technology assessment – significantly more than a simple walk through – is designed to provide accurate insights and perspective on current infrastructure, workflow and personnel.

It can become a lot like herding cats.

Organizations often fall victim to processes that are unorganized, unwieldy and scattered in all directions: Delayed document approvals that gather dust on a desk or stall helplessly in a manager’s inbox. Shaky (and unsecured) IT Infrastructure that has the wheels of IT personnel spinning for hours every day. Fluctuating monthly print costs that ride along spreadsheets like a rickety wooden roller coaster – enough shake and rattle to give any CFO a migraine.

Topics: Printing Partnering Technology Pain Network Security

Copier Service Sabermetrics: What are Your Technology Partner's Performance Numbers?

Just as Sabermetrics is utilized by baseball front offices to gain a competitive advantage, explore just how metric-driven Datamax is; and how we showcase our service responsiveness and strength by constantly measuring powerful metrics.

America’s national pastime today is a game more and more driven by analytics.

Sabermetrics is described as the empirical analysis of baseball through statistics, used to predict the performance of players. Simple box-score elements like hits, runs and errors have given way to stats like WAR (wins above replacement), BABIP (batting average on balls in play), ISO (isolated power) and DIPS (defense-independent pitching statistics). In today’s “scouts” vs. “stats” era, these exhaustive numbers go beyond what a scout’s gut may say, to actually predicting level of success.

Topics: Business Problems Digital Copiers Technology Pain Creating Raving Fans Net Promoter Score

The 3 'Cs' of Cultivating Your Own Production Print Landscape

The streamlined, cost-effective, and well-controlled in-house production landscape doesn’t exist without digging in and getting your hands dirty a little.

The colorful blooms blanketing neighborhood lawns and flowerbeds are a signature denotation of spring.

They’re also the result of a lot of hard-earned preparation.

Cultivation, or soil refinement, involves getting your hands dirty: digging into or cutting up an existing soil bed to better prepare it for planting. Cultivating the soil boosts its nourishment and plays an integral first step in the eventual beautiful springtime displays.

Topics: Office Equipment Production Print

A Mass Migration: How Architects, Engineers and Construction Firms Can Collaborate Better in the Cloud

How efficiently does your firm access and share key documents, both internally and externally? In the office and out in the field? When it comes to high-speed collaboration, could your head be in the clouds?

“We’ve had a change of plans.”

Whether those words are coming from the pilot pre-take off or the marketing department hours before a large-scale proposal pitch, they’re rarely welcomed. The phrase stirs up both anxiety and a need to swiftly shift one’s mode of thinking.

Architectural, engineering and construction firms, of course, deal with those words regularly - beginning with blueprints and continuing on the construction site. New versions of plans may be issued multiple times on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis. Core document updates, such as floor plans, change orders, or materials specifications evolve, and all parties need access to the most up-to-date set at any particular time.

Topics: Cloud Canon USA Content Management AEC Solutions

Onward & Upward: 5 New uniFLOW Online Features We're Sky-High On

New features from cloud-based print/scan solution uniFLOW Online demonstrate 5 key advantages for organizations looking to improve productivity and enhance security in their print environment. 

There’s an old joke among pilots that the most dangerous part of flying is driving to the airport.

Once into the clouds, they reason, travel is both better streamlined and more secure.

As organizations look to the cloud for operational flexibility, scalability and enhanced security, those navigating the Software as a Service (SaaS) airways continue to report clear skies ahead.

Topics: Scanning Printing Printer Management Solutions Document Security Cloud Canon USA

Recent Lawsuit Builds Even Bigger Case for Cybersecurity Education

Organizations must be accountable for guarding against cybersecurity, they must be fully aware of current risks, and they must be proactive about Cybersecurity education.

As cybersecurity increasingly becomes an agenda item inside the executive boardroom, organizations continue to recognize their own accountability in guarding against cyberattack.

But what about end users? How accountable are they?

It’s an interesting question raised in a recent news article published in KnowBe4’s Security Awareness Training Blog.

Topics: Managed Network Services Network Management Network Security Cybersecurity