Advantages of Digital Production Printing

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Production printing has long been a technology available only by outsourcing projects to a select few companies possessing an intensive print infrastructure. Fortunately, today’s digital production printing technology has transformed the print world, making exceptional quality, high-speed output, and powerful finishing options available to businesses of all sizes. Read on to learn how digital production printing can make a difference for your company.

Remarkable print quality — Internal digital production printing technology is providing print quality at levels never before seen by small and mid-sized businesses. From copy number one to copy number 1,999, color and resolution capabilities of today’s machines mean that businesses can get professional results in-house.

Cost savings — We’ve said goodbye to printing plates, film plates, chemicals, and the complicated tools and costly setups that used to be required for professional print results. Toner and droplet technologies provide fast, affordable printing options and reflect actual usage, rather than per-page cost.

Productivity improvements — Digital production printing makes professional quality outputs available at the push of a button. Having quality devices meant to produce the type of documents you need to run your business smoothly on-site instantly streamlines your team’s workflows, so they can focus on content and sales rather than coordinating the production of hardcopy business data.

On-demand access — With digital production printing, you determine printing priorities. Need to make a last-minute content change? Working a late night to prepare for a meeting? Production printing guarantees that your equipment is readily available, providing you with quick access to exceptional outputs.

Prototyping and short runs — Digital production printing provides you the flexibility to print for testing and evaluation purposes. Low-volume print jobs for proofs or prototypes don’t require extra setup, and there are no minimums required.

With digital production printing, you can print what you want, how you want it, when you want it without sacrificing quality, speed, or finishing options. This is the power of today’s print technology—quality, cost savings, productivity improvements, on-demand access, and convenient short runs. If you’d like to bring the power and flexibility of digital production printing to your business, contact Infomax today. We’d love to help you leverage today’s technology to help your business thrive.

Keep Remote Employees Connected with the Cloud

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The rise of cloud computing has been a boon for American businesses: communication and collaboration are now easier than ever, and productivity is soaring—especially outside of the office. We’ve put together a list of a few ways cloud technology can help keep your remote employees productive and engaged.

Ensure communication — With cloud-based services, there’s no reason to feel disconnected from your off-site employees because communication is easily facilitated via the cloud. Whether for one-on-one conversations or team meetings, video conferencing technology such as Skype and Google Hangouts enable everyone to see their colleagues during a call. Services like Join.me, Adobe Connect, and GoToMeeting make screen-sharing presentations possible. Meanwhile, ongoing conversations can run in a private Slack channel, which also significantly reduces email clutter.

Facilitate collaboration — Working together through the cloud can manifest itself in dozens of ways, from full-fledged project management suites (Basecamp, Asana, CentralDesktop) to document sharing (Google Docs/Drive, Dropbox) and other services (Trello and Evernote). Thanks to version control and detailed activity histories, everyone has access to the latest—and the same—information. Messy email chains and file attachments have been eliminated by centralized tools.

Outsource infrastructure headaches — Infrastructure technicalities can distract a company from its core purpose. Whether managing workspaces or maintaining servers, cloud-based services reduce your admin and housekeeping needs by providing unparalleled scalability, redundancy, and support.

Optimize your mobile workforce — Unlike the haphazard collection of software and devices that used to plague IT departments, strategic technology services can streamline your mobile device fleet, coordinate services, and improve security business-wide. Working with a mobile technology solution simplifies device management and reduces costs for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

Manage security and safety risks — Cloud-based services are uniquely positioned to keep your data secure. Firewalls, filters, and access controls limit the encroachment of security threats, while backup systems mean that your files are safe—even in the event of human error, hardware failure, or ransomware.

These days, having your head in the cloud can be a good thing. Your business can take advantage of countless communication and collaboration tools, let specialized service providers handle the headaches of infrastructure management, optimize your mobile workforce, and manage technology-related risk. If you’d like to take advantage of all the cloud has to offer, Infomax iGuard can help with security and device management. Contact us today for more information!

4 Document Management Best Practices

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Document management is a powerful tool for removing excessive paper handling from your organization’s workflows. By keeping in mind the following best practices, you’ll reap the maximum benefit from your document management system.

1. Prioritize system automation  
Take a moment to look at your current operations and determine where you want to invest your time and energy. Is the productivity of one specific department at the top of the list? Or are client-facing processes your priority? Consider a customer service document search that currently takes up to 48 hours; utilizing digital document management for that process can change your business’ response time from days to minutes. Focus your automation efforts on the area or tasks that will make the biggest impact and go from there.

2. Rethink paper-based workflows 
When moving to digital document management, rethink your approach to the paper-based processes involved. With document automation, rules and algorithms can do much of the work that used to require human management. So, as you transition to document management, do more than just replicate your paper-based processes—redesign them. With some strategic thinking, document management software can transform your business workflows.

3. Index data strategically    
Indexing is about capturing the document information that your users and programs will interface with—keywords, client names, dates, and more. When selecting document data to index, make it practical and useful. How will your end users be looking up the document? Choose fields that frame documents in ways that make the most sense for your business, and you’ll avoid bogging down the indexing process.

4. Track key metrics 
This is a tree-falling-in-the-forest issue—you’ll only know how well document management is working for your business if you track the numbers. Understand what your goals are for digital document management, establish baselines with your current system, and track your progress toward these goals. With regular data reviews, you’ll learn exactly how much time is being saved by automating a given process, and whether or not you have further streamlining to do.

Document management can be transformative for your business, so be sure to follow these best practices to get the most out of your system. To learn more about document management, or for help optimizing your existing system, contact Infomax Office Systems today.