'Paper Is An Expensive Luxury In The Digital Age'

In the current times of dwindling budgets and cost constraints, managerial leaders within organisations cannot overlook any factor that contributes to the cost – be it IT or non-IT based. In such a scenario, what role does the imaging and printing environment of the organisation play in its TCO? Puneet Datta, senior manager-Marketing, Canon Business Imaging Solutions, throws light on this in a tête-à-tête with Biztech2.com.

What is your focus going to be as far as the SME/ enterprise segment is concerned with respect to your printing peripherals?

The foremost strategy would be to focus on the expansion of our channel base, which will be tapping the SME market. This market is predicted to be the emerging market for 2009-2010.

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Coming to the enterprise segment, Canon remains committed to helping businesses streamline workflows and maximise business efficiency through its document and print management solutions. These are smart solutions, which use a combination of hardware, software and services, to cater to various company needs.

Canon offers tailored solutions in information management, output and print management and these integrated software solutions enable enhanced document security and workflows and provide the benefits of accurately measuring print usage and cost by user, work group or department. Different methods of identification are available for organisations to track who is printing what, when and where. In addition, as the systems are modular, they can be configured specifically to address the needs of specific businesses, ensuring productive use of printing devices.

How real do you think is the concept of achieving a ‘paperless office’?

A completely paperless office in a typical business environment today is not realistic. However, there is no reason to not take the initiative; it can help to improve processes and leverage information better. According to Gartner, information is doubling every 2.5 years and organisations now maintain 30 times more data than in 1999. It is also a fact that 90 percent of the documents are paper-based and it costs approximately $250 to recreate a lost document. This proves that paper is indeed an expensive luxury in comparison to what it costs to manage information digitally.

An effective document management solution will provide the traditional benefits of reducing paper and data entry costs in addition to reducing the man-hours needed to file, locate, and forward information from paper storage.

As per one set of statistics, organisations spend almost Rs 7,000 per person per year on just printing and copying paper-based documents. Even 10 percent savings in this case could translate into a big amount.

What trends do you see emerging in this space?

Varied market segments are expected to increasingly adopt laser, multi-function devices and solutions in a bid to enhance their productivity, speed up processes, and increase ease of operations while reducing costs as much as possible. Space cost is becoming more and more critical. Instead of four stand-alone devices cluttering the office, the customer now has the option of using a single device that manages all his work.

The key to understanding how business printing and imaging are changing lies in looking at what customers actually want from their communications technology as they go forward. In that light, the following trends become critical to add value to imaging offerings:

- Customers are demanding solutions to business problems, they don’t want just devices
- Effective enterprises will successfully tap their information to improve business decision-making. The company network is the lifeblood of the enterprise carrying vital information and knowledge to appropriate people and places in the company
- Service-oriented businesses use streamlined imaging and printing to enhance their value to customers
- Marketing pages are moving in-house as colour lasers are approaching the quality of traditional commercial printers
- Colour is increasingly being leveraged for powerful business communication

How do you think imaging and printing peripherals have a say in deciding how ‘green’ an organisation is and how do they affect the TCO?

In today’s times, green initiatives are entwined with all activities of the organisation. Imaging and printing peripherals have a say in the green quotient of an organisation when it comes to technology.

There are several technologies used by Canon that help cut down on carbon emissions and promote energy efficiency. Two-sided printing (duplexing) technology by Canon reduces paper usage by almost 50 percent, compact product design from Canon and resized boxes improve shipping efficiency and can help to reduce CO2 emissions. Nature Stone uses biodegradable stone packaging, reducing the need for paper and other raw materials and AIRSHELL packaging material for toner cartridges uses air cushioning to help reduce product sizes, improve shipping efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions generated during transport. At Canon, chemicals such as lead, hexavalent chromium, mercury and cadmium are banned for use in any product and process in an effort to reduce the organisation’s environmental footprint.

Laser printers from Canon in India offer a feature that ensures zero warm up time. This helps the printer to print directly from stand-by mode, thereby saving a good amount of energy every time one prints from stand-by mode. These green technologies are also supported by cost-effective technologies like Pigment Reactive (PgR) technology and full toner capacity.

What are some of the technological innovations we can expect from Canon products, which would provide a greater degree of control in the IT environment?

A very interesting aspect here is e-maintenance. This is a solution that allows you to take complete control of all your Canon devices. This helps to reduce administration burdens, increases up-time for printers and copiers, and helps to optimise the productivity of all Canon equipment.

The e-maintenance solution gives a complete status of all equipment online.