Today’s economy is squeezing organizations’ ability to acquire new tools and services.  As you look around your office, do you see a lot of file cabinets, piles of paper, mail, and inner office envelopes?  If so, your associates have most likely been doing business the same way for many years and have not seen the new technological advances that can enable organizations to save money by changing the way they do business.

A few questions to ask yourself or your corporate managers responsible for managing these responsibilities would be:

Are your software license expenses continuing to rise?

Are your mailing/shipping expenses continuing to rise?

What are we doing to address these rising costs and who can help us?

Typically, the answers to these questions aren’t very far away.  Consider inquiring with your Office Equipment Provider to help you identify areas of opportunity within your organization.  New software capabilities that have enabled analogue copiers to be moved from the back room to the middle of your office should be topics of discussion within your organization.

Organizations who have not embraced scanning technologies need to consider the impact it can have on your organization.  In 2012, 56 trillion pages will be printed with only 10% being digitally printed (HP.com).  Additionally, the ability to scan directly into Microsoft Office, eXchange, SharePoint or a directory in your network infrastructures should have organizations buzzing.  The ability to move and transport documents not only saves money, but also enables you to document and track the movement of such documents.  Additionally, desktop applications enable you to layer or annotate directly on other scanned documents.  How can this help you?  Any user can type a personal note, draw an arrow or highlight a specific section to review an existing document.  In the past, you’d need Acrobat Professional which can range from $400-800 per office worker to utilize this functionality.  Now, it’s essentially standard functionality with a connected multi-functional device that can revolutionize your office and the way you do business.  Receive a paper copy and wish you had it in Microsoft Word?  It’s as simple as walking to your Multifunctional Device, selecting your name and you’ve now created an electronic version of the paper document you received a few seconds ago.  It’s that simple.

This document evolution not only saves time and money, but also improves employee productivity.  Additionally, your information technology group will adapt and adopt this new vision of change since it’ll reduce the number of licenses needed for your organization to produce and transport documents within your organization—all of this while utilizing the existing infrastructure your IT professionals have built to support your organization by simply thinking about the solutions rather than the box that is used to make “copies”.  As you digest the needs within your organization, you’ll start to see and realize the impact you can have asking about the solutions and capabilities rather than whether or not it’ll fit in the back room.

By Gary Harman, Owner/Lincoln Branch Manager
Bishops Business Equipment

(402) 475-4445
http://www.bbec.com/