There is little doubt that the printer in the corner of your office has come a long way in the last few years. Gone is the clunky device where the paper jammed whenever you tried to perform a long print run, gone are the electricity guzzling devices that seem to cost more and more each day.

Nowadays you can print high quality documents at speed, copy and store valuable data, and manage your print provision remotely using any Wi-Fi enabled device.

Towards a more tailored approach

Today’s MFPs are, of course, high-tech solutions to document management, that save on consumables such as paper and toner and which operate at a much greater efficiency. However, they are also blessed with much greater functionality than their Neolithic predecessors.

Whilst the likes of Ricoh, Xerox and Sharp are working hard to develop machines that use fewer resources, eat up less electricity and benefit the environment, most of the changes that benefit companies and organisations nowadays are in the software packages that accompany these machines. With greater access through Wi-Fi and cloud storage, businesses can now start to develop a more focussed document management strategy than ever before.

It means also that the race is on to find the right solutions to benefit a particular business rather than opting for a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.

This has led one of the market leaders, Xerox, to start an initiative to help their business partners work better and, in turn, help grow the businesses they serve and improve their productivity. It’s all about tailoring everything to the needs of a particular business or organisation, either by a better understanding of the technology available and how it can be used for a particular cause, or by helping Xerox to develop the next software versions that improve performance.

It means that the average customer will start to get a more tailored service, because MFP suppliers have developed a much deeper understanding of their market and what it needs. Xerox have produced their Partner Solutions Playbook, which covers a wide range of business and organisational scenarios and provides solutions to particular problems. That can include giving customers an app that monitors toner and paper usage, which allows managers to order quickly, improving productivity, or offering the ability to scan customer documents directly into software such as a customer relations management system, that also saves time and money.

The printing and document requirements for a school or college are different from that of a business such as a solicitors or an organisation like the NHS. The problem for each is to find the solution that best meets their needs. In the future this will include having software installed that is tailored to and created for their particular environment and which has the ability to interact or work with other software they may have.

To do this, businesses and organisations will need to get the right, in-depth advice from their print management company – something that requires a high level of expertise and insight into the way that a simple MFP can revolutionise the way you do business, cut down your costs and operate more productively.