The Datamax Thinking Blog

Buying a copier locally will likely be a better fit and provide better service for your business.

What’s not to like about visiting a local farmers’ market and buying produce fresh out of the ground or off the vine? Not only does it taste great; the feeling of supporting the local community is nice too.

Supporting your neighbors down the street or the people you see in church on a Sunday is a good feeling.

Buying copiers is, a little, like buying vegetables from a farmers’ market versus going to a grocery chain. The freshness, service, and local support are hard to match.

While here at Datamax we don’t believe there’s a secret sauce, we do believe in technology and think there are a few key “ingredients” that are critical to our clients’ achieving success.

IT projects don’t fail because of the information technology – and if they do it’s rare. Most IT projects fail when a company thinks they’ve found some sort of “secret sauce” of technology; as if ineffective business processes are going to magically be fixed or improved and employees will immediately be able to adapt and use the new tools. On the contrary, research from the Project Management Institute shows that changing mindsets and attitudes is viewed as the greatest barrier to new project success by 58% of people. 

There aren’t many shortcuts in life, especially when it comes to changing attitudes (those of us with stubborn children can relate).

Find out if your document workflow is wasting your time – ask yourself these 10 questions.

It’s important to get documents to the right people at the right time – decisions can be made and invoices get paid. However, moving them through the office smoothly isn’t always the easiest task.

It’s easy for documents to wander off and when paper documents are placed on someone’s desk, there’s a good chance those documents will quickly end up at the bottom of a pile of paperwork (never to be seen again).

Copiers are intricate machines. Training helps to ensure that employees maximize the capabilities and cost-savings they bring to your business.

Of course everyone in your office knows how to use the copier. 

Well, not quite. If you mean they know how to copy a document or print from the copier or printer, then yeah, sure.

But…

• Do they know that the copier has apps that make it easier to print and to receive scanned documents (among other apps – specifics vary by manufacturer)? 
• Do they understand the print rules and that they’re in place to save money and improve processes? 

Managing copiers can suck a lot of time from your day. Did you know existing functionality on your copier can help with that?

Happy Monday! You walk into the office and immediately have to troubleshoot because an unscheduled firmware upgrade decided to play havoc on your users’ copier connections in the office. Aren’t Mondays already hard enough?

You know how it feels to clean your house? How great it feels once you finish and you know it’s something that has to be done, but no one (other than Martha Stewart maybe) actually enjoys doing it?

Rather than guessing at your document output and printing needs, your managed service partner will identify the right mix of office equipment to meet your ACTUAL printing and output needs.

Managed Print Services in a nutshell:

You pay for a set number of prints and copies per month (and a pre-determined fee for anything over that set number) from equipment managed by your partner. 

It’s better to have a partner than someone just selling you something. Asking these questions will help you find that partner.

Partnering with an office equipment provider to purchase equipment, guide your document automation efforts, or a pursue a managed print services strategy is a big investment in both time and money. That’s why when choosing a partner, it’s critical that you ask them the right questions and that they give you honest answers.

Most of us have heard this before, but it’s worth repeating because it’s true – there are no stupid questions (though we’ve all probably heard some stupid answers). 

This is especially true when asking a potential office equipment provider questions. When it comes to deciding whom to partner with for your copier and other office equipment needs – questions are an important part of the selection process.

How important? 

When looking at companies that sell copiers, selecting the right partner can really make or break how effective a technology purchase, lease, and/or software implementation will be.  Since questions are important in this process, here is a short list of them to help you separate the pretenders from the contenders.  

According to research from InfoTrends, the biggest hurdle to printing from mobile devices is “technical connectivity problems to the printer.”

The majority of office workers don’t print from their mobile devices because they don’t think it’s an option.

What if that weren’t a problem? Well, it’s not. “There’s an app for that” is a pretty common phrase these days and in this case is true – there’s an app for printing from smartphones.

For personal printing at home there is a quick caveat

Save time and a walk back to your computer, scan a document and share via email directly from your copier.

We may all live in a digital world but, even so, at some point you’ll receive physical pieces of paper and need to send them to someone electronically.

Accomplishing this always seems to involve a small amount of irritation. For whatever reason those few extra steps tend to make the process seem daunting (even when it’s really not).