Generating a steady stream of revenue and ensuring document security are big objectives for a business of any size to survive. But many of them – especially small businesses – neglect to adopt a comprehensive means for tracking multifunction printer (MFP) usage and recovering costs. Additionally, many businesses don’t take the necessary precautions to protect and secure files across their organization. The result? They’re tossing a bundle of valuable funds into the wind while leaving their organization open to security breaches and threats.
Print management solutions, like those offered by Konica Minolta, help companies gain control of print, copy, scan and fax jobs based on individual users to reduce costs and increase productivity and document security. The data collected can be used for simple tracking of things like identifying who’s printing too much color, who’s printing single sided vs. saving paper by duplexing, or who’s printing to expensive desktop printers. The data also can be used for departmental billback or client billing.
Another common attribute is the ability to apply rules like having all emails printed in black-and-white or having any job over three pages automatically duplexed — all based on the data received. Print management is commonly used across all verticals when they would like to know exactly who is doing what for all of the above – plus more.
But the other important component to print management is security. That is, not leaving data in any form open to prying eyes and the unauthorized use and distribution of personal information. While this is critical to businesses in all industries, it’s of utmost importance to the healthcare, education and legal fields as they must adhere to strict compliance laws.
Let’s consider the landscape of cost recovery in some of the major vertical markets.
Healthcare – With HITECH & HIPAA compliance regulations looming over them, healthcare facilities would do well with such print management solutions offering a wide range of capabilities. An important criteria in the healthcare arena is the need to integrate seamlessly with existing electronic health record (EHR) systems and claims management systems. Added to this are integrated scanning and card reader authentication for secure pull printing and tracking. Please keep in mind that all solutions are not created equal when it comes to healthcare. Be sure you use the one that meets all of the requirements for your environment. All combined, these solutions would provide a healthcare facility with a solid cost recovery program.
Education – K-12 and higher education have very different environments when it comes to cost recovery. K-12 tends to be more localized and utilize solutions such as “FollowYou” for secure printing from Google Chrome while tracking and budgeting staff printing by faculty, department, class or year level. Higher education requires all of this as well as campus card authentication with integration using student billing systems such as CBOARD and Blackboard, which use one card for all student activities. Also, all schools must comply with the federal Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), so the security functions of cost recovery solutions can greatly help with adherence.
Legal – The majority of the legal market charge back to their clients a variety of document services as previously mentioned, so print management is vital to law firms. These applications can also provide automated workflow solutions, routing to key destinations and integration with popular document management systems such as Worldox, iManage, OpenText and NetDocuments – all providing an enormous value-add to legal departments. Konica Minolta partners with nQueue and Nuance to offer solutions which include client billing and secure print attributes using proximity cards, but also includes integrated single sign-on scanning to many of the document management systems outlined above. This is what legal professionals are seeking in a more robust cost recovery solution. Firms would do well to consider integrated scanning and integration with their existing client billing and document management systems.
The upside here is that there are plenty of ways to implement a cost recovery plan and print management system into your organization with plenty of benefits to doing so. This is all part of an exciting Workplace of the Future™ where technology is paving the way to saving your business time, money and resources. And Konica Minolta is fortunate enough to be at the forefront of this thrilling wave of opportunities that we’re bringing to markets across the entire business spectrum.
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