The Datamax Thinking Blog

As we all dig into a new year, here are a few of our greatest hits from last year.

I hope your new year is off to a fantastic start. As we all dig into a new year, here are a few of our greatest hits from last year.

Whether you’re revisiting them or seeing these for the first time, thank you for reading. All of us here at Datamax look forward to helping you reach your business goals this year. 

Waiting on your copier or other office equipment to be tended to is not only annoying; it also has a waterfall effect on your office’s productivity.

“Ding.” 

Wouldn’t it be great if you could ring a bell and receive immediate service?

Like the simple ringer – you remember those – that sat in a store or on the counter of a hotel desk. You’d almost always hear a “Be with you in a moment” after just a quick press on the bell and a ringing “ding!” sound. And you were satisfied, because you knew service was on the way. 

Who likes unnecessary waiting? Even the patient among us has trouble tolerating that. Even the smallest delays can send the most patient person into a fit of frustration when it comes to the office and work deadlines.

Using your copier to scan to the cloud is straightforward (the specifics WILL be different for different models and manufacturers, but the basic steps are similar).

You’ve heard of “the cloud,” even if you don’t follow technology at all you’ve most likely heard someone use this term. Usually when it’s mentioned it’s with a touch of reverence and a hint that the cloud will solve your technology challenges, which (when used correctly) cloud services really can bring huge business and personal productivity improvements.

The cloud essentially means that instead of your information/documents or your application (like iTunes, Office 365, or personal productivity tool Evernote) “living” on a your computing device (smartphone, laptop, PC, or tablet), they “live” on a third-party hosted platform and you can access the cloud service via the Internet. As with anything IT-related, the cloud becomes more complicated the deeper you dig into it. If you’re interested, this Cloud Computing 101 article is a good starting point for more detail.

Obviously in order to secure your business and sensitive data you have to know your points of weakness.

How many printers, scanners, copiers, computers, laptops, webcams, tablets, and smartphones are in your office right now? Every one of them is a ripe target for hackers. 

So, if you truly counted, and I know you did because what better way to spend your already limited time, then that’s how many points of penetration the cyber-thieves of the world have to gain access to your network (and your data). Oh, and if you have any videoconferencing systems, smart TVs, or DVRs, go ahead and tack that on to your list of hacker-vulnerable equipment.

You can’t manage what you don’t measure. If you don’t know how much you print, then you don’t know how much you’re spending on print – in either time or with your budget.

A commonly used and accepted statistic based on research from industry analyst Gartner is that you can save up to 30% of your printing costs by partnering with a managed print services (MPS) provider. 

But what does that number mean? It’s so abstract. And what are some of the hidden printing costs? 

Here are 8. 

When it comes to technology, we often have too much unbridled faith in the power of technology to fix the problem (whatever the problem is, we often think there’s a technology solution – a secret sauce to fix our businesses).

I’m going to give away the ending of this post now: there is no secret sauce for any IT project (unless you count doing the hard work required, but that’s hardly a secret). 

IT projects rarely fail because of the information technology. They often fail because many companies think they’ve found a “secret sauce” of technology that will somehow magically fix or improve broken or ineffective business processes and that employees will immediately adapt to and use new tools. In fact, research from the Project Management Institute shows that 58% of people view changing mindsets and attitudes as the greatest barrier to new project success. 

If you’re experiencing any of the following issues regularly, you’re wasting time when you don’t need to.

I can’t think of many worse ways to start a Monday than by having to immediately troubleshoot an unscheduled firmware upgrade that has played havoc with your users’ connections to the copiers in your office. 

Managing the various office devices is a little bit like cleaning your house – it has to be done, and it’s a great feeling when you’ve finished, but no one actually likes doing it. 

There IS something all copiers have in common: they can kick start office-wide productivity boosts and allow you to get more done in less time.

“The copier’s down . . . Again!” 

Not only can you hear the frustration, you can see it – since your co-worker is staring unhappily in your direction. 

You’ve repaired and duct taped your copier to coax it along as long as possible. It’s unavoidable now – you have to get a new one into the office or risk an uprising from frustrated co-workers. 

Even electronic documents can be lost if you don’t take the time to ensure an effective workflow and index the documents for future retrieval.

Moving documents through your office and getting them to the right people at the right time so that decisions can be made (and invoices paid!) is important. 

It’s also easy for documents to go astray. Paper documents placed on someone’s desk could quickly end up at the bottom of a stack, never to be seen again. A sensitive document printed to the color copier down the hall could be accidentally picked up by a co-worker – and could even be a privacy or other compliance breach depending on the level of personally identifiable information contained in the document. 

Even electronic documents can be lost if you don’t take the time to ensure an effective workflow and index the documents for future retrieval. 

With print rules, you can establish different rules for different roles within your office so that they can meet their legitimate printing needs.

As we interact with information more and more online (PC, tablets, and phones); we still need to print documents to paper. The question becomes not if you need to print, but how do you print documents to:

• Improve print efficiency – and productivity of employees
• Save money
• Meet any green initiatives

Printing rules, combined with an office-wide print strategy and policy, will help you achieve all three of those goals. Printing rules are based on conditions and consequences and designed to create effective user printing behavior. These rules are set using print management software. With print rules, you can establish different rules for different roles within your office so that they can meet their legitimate printing needs.