FLEET INTELLIGENCE — ASSESSMENTS

Once Multiscope completes a study of your entire fleet, patterns will emerge and, usually, some immediate changes can be made to help increase efficiency. Depending on your decision to do a basic assessment or a more in-depth assessment and discovery, knowing exactly where all those printing assets are located is an important first step to gaining control of your fleet. In-depth assessments provide more analysis on aspects of document management, workflow, and security.

HARDWARE AND WORKFLOW OPTIMIZATION

The discovery assessment helps pinpoint the bottlenecks and areas of inefficiency within your office environment relating to hardware placement and document workflow. Upon understanding your document needs, the Multiscope Document Solutions team will work with you to design a hardware and software solution plan to achieve your workflow goals. In many cases, devices are over-utilized and require frequent maintenance.

Other devices are expensive to operate and departments may have either too much or too little printing hardware. Depending on your document workflow goals, certain departments may lack the ability to print securely, access scan-to-email functionality, or store and efficiently route e-documents through your organization. The Multiscope Document Solutions team considers these factors when designing a plan to take you from your current process to your future state—all within a timeline that makes sense for your business.

DEPLOYMENT AND CHANGE MANAGEMENT

In terms of its importance in the overall success of your strategy, transitioning from your current document environment to your future state is often underestimated. During this phase, users will likely experience changes to where and how they print, how they order and receive supplies, how devices are serviced, and how they access and manage documents. While these changes will be positive for your organization, users often resist change before they embrace it. Understanding how to use new hardware and access information differently will take time.

The Multiscope Document Solutions team has developed several unique software programs and support solutions to ease this transition and get your team on track quickly. Multiscope leverages cloud-based tools to help keep your transition plan on track and accessible to you and your staff. These tools can also help automate the task of configuring devices for rapid deployment.

CLOUD REMOTE MONITORING

Managing the day-to-day needs of your diverse printing fleet can be a full-time job. Who’s best to manage this task: your internal IT resources or an outside firm that specializes in office printing? Multiscope’s monitoring solution will automate many functions that have typically required multiple systems or manual processes, such as:

• Meter read collection
• Supply level management
• Break/fix service alerts
• Device uptime statistics and error reporting
• Usage data by device, user, and file type (MS Word, MS Excel, PDF, etc.)

With the Multiscope Document Solutions team monitoring your fleet remotely and in real-time, you can focus on your core business initiatives, knowing that your fleet is being proactively managed.

INTELLIGENCE PORTAL

Contained within the cloud-based infrastructure of the Multiscope Document Solutions program is a highly intuitive intelligence portal. The portal offers a number of reports and information dashboards that provide up-to-date intelligence on the performance of a printing fleet, its devices, and its users. There’s no shortage of information about a printing fleet, but too often such data isn’t easily accessible or formatted in an easy-to-understand manner.

Multiscope’s intelligence portal is much different. It provides the information you need in a simplified viewing format, which means you can quickly determine how well your fleet is performing and discover opportunities for improvement and greater efficiencies.

PROACTIVE SUPPLIES AND SERVICE FULFILLMENT

Efficiently managing your printing assets is a cornerstone of the Multiscope Document Solutions program. Whether your printing devices are Multiscope models or those from other manufacturers, the Multiscope team is equipped to service and supply many major brands of output devices. Multiscope can manage many of them with just-in-time (JIT) supplies and service using remote monitoring software to continuously monitor and determine when the device will require supply replenishment. If a device breaks down, the help desk team can remotely triage the problem and dispatch a technician to make needed repairs.

Supply management is predictive, with toner arriving at your door before you even know it’s running out. Supplies ship nationwide to arrive directly at the location in need via special supply routing labels. Who’s best to manage day-to-day supply and service of your hardware fleet: your internal resources using manual processes or Multiscope’s team of dedicated professionals using automated, predictive services?

ENTERPRISE AND PRODUCTION OUTPUT MANAGEMENT

You need options when it comes to printing. While some companies prefer smaller print jobs to be run on nearby machines, larger print volumes are typically better served by high-volume devices or even in-house production level devices. In some environments, users move throughout the organization and may need to print at different locations.

With uniFLOW software from Canon, Multiscope can help organizations set rules for printing based on their corporate objectives. uniFLOW can also provide user metrics on the types and volumes of documents being printed. When used in conjunction with proximity/swipe cards, users can print and walk up to devices, then securely retrieve their documents at their convenience.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT AND WORKFLOW

Without a clear strategy for simplifying document storage and retrieval, your employees are wasting their most valuable resource—time. Multiscope uses Therefore™ software from Canon, a powerful, end-to-end, information management solution that helps to not only retrieve information quickly, but also organize and streamline content management.

Therefore™ delivers document management basics such as storage, version control, and expiration. It can also help with advanced content management functions, such as designing procedures and guidelines around document creation, workflow, security, and access. Such functionality can help eliminate manual paper workflows by replacing them with streamlined, automated processes. And Therefore™ supports both on-site and cloud-based solutions for flexible implementation.

MOBILE AND REMOTE USER SERVICES

Of the adult population, 78% uses a smartphone.* Have you been able to easily incorporate smartphone and tablet users into your document workflow? Mobile users in an office or remote location often have a mobile workspace and require document access and printing capabilities from their tablets or smartphones.

A comprehensive document management strategy should consider the needs of mobile workers. More and more workers within the office access documents via mobile devices, which means it’s important that any document strategy incorporate the evolving trends associated with these devices and their impact on an office environment.

Multiscope print solutions for both remote workers and mobile devices within the office bring both sets of users into the Document Solutions program, further helping to control and manage costs and ensure that users have access to the tools required to work efficiently.

* Source: BizLaunch survey of 275 small businesses across North America, June 2013

SECURITY

What does information security mean to your company? There are many components to securing information in your environment, and Multiscope can be an important part of the process.

Part of an integrated document security plan should consider securing access to sensitive documents, tracking editions, and monitoring the use of files. Without proper controls, it’s not uncommon for sensitive documents to be left uncollected around the printer, leaving your information unprotected.

QUARTERLY BUSINESS REVIEWS

Managing your business documents is an ongoing process. As your business changes over time, your document needs will, too. The Multiscope Document Solutions process is one that provides continuous monitoring and updating. User requirements, as well as those of entire departments, may change quickly.

In order to stay on top of your changing needs, Multiscope will execute quarterly business reviews (QBRs). Do volume increases in one department warrant a new device? Are some devices being overutilized or underutilized? Is there a new workflow process that’s changed the type of output users now require? Keeping on top of these smaller issues as they arise may help reduce the need for any larger, more invasive changes down the road.