Category News

Print your business recovery

Printed communication as a powerful differentiator.

Tired of digital?

Week by week we’re seeing the impact of COVID-19 on the global economy and on the print industry. Print volumes are depleted as businesses of all types press ‘pause’ on normal activity. Print service providers (PSPs) will benefit from taking time to reflect on the role that print can play to support brands through these unprecedented times, and in their long-term recovery.

Right now, most brands are turning up their marketing volumes on digital platforms as a relatively quick and cost-efficient way to reach customers, and because it’s easy to keep these channels active remotely.

But are their digital marketing efforts having a real impact and delivering true ROI? Before the crisis hit, as consumers we were already suffering a severe case of digital overload – and that’s now exacerbated. What with video meetings and webinars, email marketing, social media and virtual events, to say nothing of the rise of digitally streamed content, we’re all in a state of growing digital fatigue.

The closest communication

We’re admiring brands that are taking more creative approaches to communicate with us. Any brand can send an e-shot, but those that make the effort to send a well-designed printed direct mail piece, brochure, catalogue or even postcard will reap the rewards.

Printed direct marketing is the closest a brand will physically come to a customer without them having to leave their house – a welcome intrusion at a time when we’re all being urged to stay home.

In this time of isolation and separation, we crave warmth, affection, touch and emotion. Which marketing medium delivers best on these? Print connects emotionally with people beyond the scope of any digital platform, engaging three of our five senses – sight, touch and smell. That’s a powerful differentiator right now.

The one commodity we have most of now is time. Time to read, engage, and dive into content that grabs our attention. What better time to put print at the heart of a marketing campaign?

Playing to print’s strengths

In a time of uncertainty, consumers look to brands and communications channels they trust. This plays to print’s strengths: 56% of people see printed marketing as the most trustworthy form of communication¹.

Online sales are currently buoyant and print can be used at every touchpoint in the customer’s buying journey to generate and convert leads. And PSPs can elevate brands’ ROI with personalisation, using customer data to deliver timely marketing messages. 91% of people are more likely to purchase when brands recognise and remember them, and provide relevant communication².

Brands need to maintain visibility and customer connection now, with a view to rebuilding demand for their products and services. When life returns to normal and they want to stimulate interest, brand preference and footfall, print can be one of the most effective tools to connect with their audiences. It’s time to be proactive and be a trusted advisor, helping your customers use the power of print to forge ahead.

Now is the time to hone your digital transformation strategy

With the need for a remote working setup rapidly escalating, now is the time to refine your processes in order to protect your business for the future.

A global shake up that none of us could have foreseen, has forced many businesses into quick-fix solutions for remote working. Your level of “make do” will depend on how far along you were in your digital transformation journey prior to this, but well established or not, remote working is going to be a longer-term reality for all of us. As government restrictions across the world begin to shift, the need for flexibility in your working practices becomes ever more essential, so you need to make sure your infrastructure is going to be up to the task of meeting these longer-term needs.

Within that, you need to consider, not just the technology you are using, but how that technology can positively impact the running of your business and the way both your employees and customers interact with it. The ideal is to create a flow of increasingly efficient and productive processes that lay the foundation for ongoing growth through more flexible ways of working.

Optimise your processes for thriving business continuity

So, where do you start? Plan and prioritise. Remember digital transformation is a journey, not a destination. You simply don’t have the time or resource to attempt to transform your entire organisation all in one go, nor has that route ever proved successful. Your emergency plan for remote working most likely focused on basic communications, collaborations and document access. You now need to turn to your most business-critical processes, like finance, legal and HR, for example.

Within your remote framework, how are you currently dealing with tasks like onboarding new employees or customers, reviewing contracts or handling payments? What devices do your team have access to for activating these processes? Your workforce needs to be able manage scanning and uploading documents to the cloud, as well as approvals and processing of critical documents, like invoices, contracts and so on, from wherever they are. So, look at your workflows and the technology you’re providing for enabling those workflows. Where can you digitise or automate part or all of these processes to make remote management easier? Where can you reduce manual admin and free up time for more rewarding, higher value tasks? Can you streamline current systems? Can you activate digital protocols, allowing you to both strengthen the security of your business information and give your team greater visibility of the data you hold for staying on top of compliance?

There’s a lot to consider here, but if you think about it from the perspective of your customer and employee experience at each touchpoint, you should be able to design something that works first time round. Simply, the optimisation of business processes and stakeholder experience need to go hand-in-hand. You need processes that are intuitive and adaptable in order to keep information flowing smoothly and your workforce happy and productive. You want to make it easy for your team to do their job in the most efficient and effective way possible. This means reducing the opportunity for human error and allowing greater focus on customer service.

Harnessing your data: the key to unlocking business growth

The benefits of optimising your processes don’t just end with productivity and efficiency. Once you really get to grips with managing your business-critical information, you’re no longer focusing on documents, you’re unlocking the opportunity of data. The introduction of cloud-based digital tools means that data can not only be stored, but also harnessed for business insight.

With greater insights and analytics about your business available, you have the ability to improve your ways of working on an ongoing basis, alongside making well-informed decisions about your strategic direction. You can begin to generate even deeper customer knowledge and be able to tailor your setup in line with their needs. Not only does this mean improvements in your business’s overall performance, you also now have the flexibility and scalability to quickly adapt to whatever the changeable future may bring.

Canon support for Universal Print by Microsoft

Innovative cloud printing technology for simplicity, security and less IT infrastructure

Universal Print, developed by Microsoft is a cloud-based print solution that enables simple and secure printing experiences, while reducing time and effort for IT.

Universal Print moves key Windows Server print infrastructure to the Microsoft 365 cloud and provides robust and centralised print management capability. A single generic driver is used, irrespective of printer model, so no driver management and setup is needed. Printers are easily identified from Windows devices and users continue to print as they always have.

For IT professionals who are managing print, Universal Print offers:

• A print solution to enable the move to the cloud and support print for Azure AD users.
• Managed printing in zero-trust networks.
• Eliminates the need to manage print servers or the need for complex hybrid print solutions.
• A centralised portal that enables robust management capability.
• Visibility and insights into your print with reporting.
• Print data stored in the same manner as other Microsoft Office data, in accordance with Microsoft’s data management guidelines.
• Printer deployment and default printer configuration on end-user devices using Microsoft Endpoint Manager (Microsoft Intune).

The benefits of combining Canon and Universal Print

100% Cloud

Create a completely serverless environment and reduce costs.

Improve IT workflow

Improve IT workflow

Ease the burden on IT and infrastructure management with a simplified registration process and single generic driver.

No end-user training

No end-user training

User experience remains the same with no additional training required.

Simplify print management

Simplify print management

Extended functionality with uniFLOW for security, authentication and accounting.

Extending functionality with uniFLOW Online Express & uniFLOW Online

*Universal Print by Microsoft requires individual device registration while devices can be activated in bulk to uniFLOW Online Express

INFORMATION SECURITY

Today security challenges exist everywhere, inside, and outside of a business, both malicious and unintentional. What doesn’t change, is the impact of these challenges whether financial or reputational. Here is an overview of the challenges faced every day.

DATA BREACHES
• Data breaches can do vast reputational and financial damage
• A data breach occurs when personal information held by an organisation is subject to misuse or loss or to unauthorised access, modification, or disclosure
• A data breach can be caused deliberately because of a malicious act from an external party or a disgruntled employee
• It can also be caused by human error or by a failure to implement security measures
• Incorrectly configured systems or user applications can also be blamed for data breaches

POTENTIAL INSIDER THREATS
There are two types of insider threats:
• Insider leaks have clear and malicious intentions behind them
• Unintentional threats could be an everyday occurrence caused by a lack of security awareness or network devices introduced with unclear security protocols in place
NETWORK-CONNECTED DEVICES
• Devices connected to the network can offer a gateway to the internet, potentially exposing data held within these devices to malicious individuals
• Devices without the appropriate security controls could also be used as an entry point into the network environment and vital systems holding sensitive information
TRENDS DRIVING THE NEED FOR SECURITY
Based on European data

1. General regulatory compliance is the top information security concern for most European organisations.
2. Latest GDPR fines are driven by lack of internal technical and organisational measures rather than the impact to the individuals.
3. For many organisations, print and document security is often overlooked as part of IT security strategy.
4. Print security is a low IT priority with only 19% considering print security as “very important” compared to overall IT security.
5. IT infrastructure is only as secure as its weakest link – print and document infrastructure is often the most at-risk.

OUR APPROACH

Canon’s portfolio of products, solutions and services spans the entire information lifecycle and tackles the issues that matter.

PRINT MANAGEMENT:

The Challenge
Organisations are concerned about potential insider threats, either unintentional or malicious. Print can often be a huge security gap as it’s difficult to have complete visibility of user or document activity in the event of a data breach.

How We Help
Apart from enabling authentication at the print device, we can monitor and store records of all user activity – who printed what, when and from where in the organisation. Read the content of documents sent to print and generate alerts based on keywords contained in the document.

The Benefits
• Prevent potential information leakage
• Ability to pinpoint how a data breach occurred and the employees involved
• Avoid costly fines by offering the required information to the relevant bodies and demonstrate compliance with associated laws

CAPTURE MANAGEMENT:

The Challenge
HR departments, for instance, deal with sensitive employee information, so it’s important that any scanned documents containing payroll details for example, reach their desired destination securely. User error could lead to potential data loss.

How We Help
Authentication can be enabled at the scanning device and users can be assigned personalised scanning workflows based on their roles or departments. For instance, a payroll workflow can be assigned to HR team members, so any scanned documents are sent to Finance, without needing to select a destination or scan settings. Scan jobs and data are encrypted and transmitted over a secure channel. A clear record of device usage, user activity and scan destinations are maintained.

The Benefits
• Reduce risk of information being sent to wrong recipient
• Prevent the external leakage of information by unauthorised users
• Better control of documents and increased user efficiency

DOCUMENT & CONTENT MANAGEMENT:

The Challenge
Organisations face regulatory challenges and compliance responsibilities relating to the management of their data. Documents containing personal data and sensitive information relating to customers and employees, such as contracts or employee passports copies, need to be stored, processed, and destroyed securely, in compliance with data privacy rules.

How We Help
We can help from SMEs to heavily regulated organisations in sectors such as financial services, energy, and telecoms, define and set permissions for each user, to control access to digital documents anytime, anywhere. Centrally managed business rules can be applied to check all the documents a particular user has accessed, as well as set a general retention policy for documents to be deleted after a specified period. Detailed reports are available on all activity to analyse work habits.

The Benefits
• Gain full control of who accesses documents and how these are used for legit business purposes
• Maintain regulatory compliance with laws concerning data retention
• Allow users to work with business documents remotely with complete security