From paper to pixels, and beyond

As communications continue migrating away ink on paper and toward screens, a new breed of intelligent printing devices is finding its place on resellers’ portfolios.

Beyond spitting out inkjet or laser-printed pages, these devices increasingly capture and onboard it into document workflows. Today it’s about smart multifunction printers (MFPs) crammed with features such as data security and connectivity to third party software – including SaaS – as well as inline finishing and environmental safeguards.

Vendors are bringing out some exciting new kit. Take Oki Data, for example. Antonio Leone, marketing manager of Oki Data Australia, says the vendor is broadening the range of products that support its Smart Extendable Platform (SXP). 

“Oki products with SXP allow users to streamline and integrate their MFP into their environments. This ensures that document workflows – capture, distribution, management and output – are all performed in a manner that drives efficiencies,” says Leone. 

“These products also offer advanced levels of security, including secure print job encryption, to preserve the confidentiality of data and information. Collectively, these solutions enable Oki channel partners to access customers in medium-to-large organisations, where security, device integration and efficiency optimisation are critical, with heavy workloads,” he says. 

“That ensures favourable consumables returns, as well as the opportunity to deploy such products on managed print service contracts.”

Billing and connectivity

Kyocera has its new A4 MFP range of four 40ppm and two 60ppm devices. All of these are fitted with Kyocera’s environmentally friendly Ecosys technology. The ‘toner only’ drum-free system delivers up to 500,000 pages per drum on the high-end models, which dramatically lowers the waste generated during the life of the product, says Supol Leng, Kyocera’s Ecosys product manager.

But Kyocera is offering more than the boxes, as it markets its cost-saving Three-Tier Colour Coverage Billing solution, with colour print costs based on actual usage of colour toner per page. This allows customers to simply pay for what they use. 

Mark Vella, director of sales & marketing, Kyocera Document Solutions A/NZ, says: “Three-tier billing is especially beneficial to customers with low-colour coverage levels who are generally charged full-colour rates. It’s important to consider the print needs of both SMEs and large enterprises, as SMEs are generally looking to cut the costs of printing, while large enterprises are looking to manage their colour printing volumes.”

KYOeasyprint is a productivity tool for SMEs, offering single-click generation of complex printing routines. It enables one document to be sent to different internal departments in a single procedure, speeding administrative processes, increasing office efficiency and reducing administrative costs. 

Meanwhile, Kyocera’s SharePoint Connector allows users to browse through SharePoint document libraries and sites, from most HyPAS-enabled Kyocera MFPs, and enables printing from and scanning to Microsoft SharePoint, including SharePoint Online.

Next: Vendor partnerships