The Datamax Thinking Blog

Is your SMB ready to think bigger about the technology you deploy? Are the practical advantages that come with cloud-based solutions a right fit for your organization? 

Author Tim Ferris says “Life’s too short to think small.”

Many ambitious, hungry start-up entrepreneurs begin with nothing other than a huge dream.

Naysayers may accuse them of having their head “in the clouds” when it comes to their business vision, with their seemingly unrealistic, impractical ideas and expectations.

Either way, business owners having their heads in cloud technology is both practical and advantageous. Given the right technology partner, utilizing cloud-based tools can boost productivity and demand minimal management effort on their part.  

Before you begin asking “When can I expect a technician” and “When will my issue be resolved,” a few key questions will shine a light on just how prompt and ultimately effective your copier service might be moving forward.

There’s an old Bizarro comic strip showing an older man leaning up against the Patient Registration desk at a doctor’s office. “I’ve been waiting for 20 minutes!” he scolds the receptionist.

“Down the hall. You want ‘impatient registration’” the woman replies.

Comedy aside, customers today are tired of waiting.

Whether you’re producing fast-turnaround, lower-length jobs or massive, one-time runs, more organizations are discovering the distinct advantage of going "All-In on In-House" production. 

In finding an effective process for getting your own high quality printed materials out the door, it’s hard to bet against the house. Particularly, your own.

As the landscape changes, so do business needs. It’s a technology partner’s obligation to maintain an open dialogue, to listen intently, and provide complete transparency on documented expectations and business-building strategies. 

In my time as a Solutions Sales Specialist, I played a lot of  “20 Questions.”

My steady stream of inquiries to clients had a strategic intent. The client's answers provided key nuggets of information for:

• digging into client current (and future) needs 
• discovering operational challenges 
• planting new seeds of opportunity 
• ensuring expectations were being met at all times

If there was a gap between my client's perception and reality, it was my job to stand in it.

With a legitimate framework in place, and the proper education continually enforced, employees can universally identify both risk levels and types and, more importantly… understand exactly what these findings mean. 

Finding themselves in an environment entangled with cyber threats and potential data breaches, the map to compliance that healthcare organizations unfold often leads to a risk analysis.

But these organizations should know that the journey does not stop there.

While the 4Cs in education help empower students to be think-tanks of tomorrow, the 4Cs of business technology should and can liberate your on-campus technology team to apply these classroom initiatives.

As educators further pursue the ideal 21st century learning environment, one won’t dig far without uncovering the 4Cs.

The 4Cs – critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication - have been adopted and implemented into the curriculum of school districts and professional development programs for years. Established by the National Education Association and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, these four components are a guide post for choosing specific tools, software and curriculum for the modern day, technologically advanced environment of today’s youth.

Your business technology partner should play a key role in helping bring those 4Cs to light. 

Social Engineering is really no different than any old school scam from the past, other than modern technology is the setting (for the modern attack)." - Justin Huffaker, Vice President of Strategic Technology, Datamax Inc.

Most recall the Martin Scorsese film “Catch Me if You Can,” which follows New York teen Frank Abagnale (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) posing as a Pan American World Airways pilot, a Georgia doctor and a Louisiana parish prosecutor to successfully execute million-dollar cons.

Abagnale’s ploys, while sophisticated, relied heavily on the ingrained, trusting nature of humans to carry out his elaborate schemes: Much like Social Engineering in 2018, some 60 years after Abagnale’s antics.

Ransomware, namely the WannaCry and NotPetya viruses, filled newsfeeds last year as the most prolific cyber security attacks in history. How prolific? The two Ransomware attacks combined to infect 200,000 machines in 100 countries, and NotPetya caused an estimated $1.2 billion in damages.

The most common shark attack against humans is known as the “hit-and-run” attack. Typically occurring in the surf zone amid murky waters, the swimmer or surfer seldom even sees its attacker.

The same could certainly be said for Ransomware in 2017.

The MFP, in many ways a centerpiece in our workflow place-setting, continues to have an evolving role in how paper and digital files co-exist in the workplace.

The “Paperless Office:” It’s been a corporate prophecy scripted upon blogs much like this for years, as offices of all sizes gather tools and solutions necessary to tackle the digital transformation. Without a doubt, workflow is increasingly digital in nature.

However, according to numbers complied in Canon’s recent “Office Insights 2018” release, paper itself isn’t going anywhere anytime soon – quite the opposite. It seems that the paperless office is a gradual, steady process of automation that enables best printing and workflow practices for the foreseeable future.

This legislation is a game changer for how applicable organizations process, retain and store customer data. 

On May 25, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was officially enforced, representing a watershed moment for consumer data protection and privacy moving forward.

This legislation, designed to better unify and protect data privacy for European Union citizens, applies to those within EU-member countries, so US-based companies may not think that this overseas legislation is relevant to their everyday business.  These companies should think again: The GDPR could be very relevant to you and the way you currently collect and store data.