PRINT
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RESELLER.UK
23
DIGITISATION
As the chill sets in, many parts of
the country are already reflecting on
the disruption caused last year by
adverse weather conditions. Whether
this winter’s weather patterns are
as extreme remains to be seen,
but there’s no denying that the
damage inflicted by Mother Nature
can also impact your customers’
businesses, no matter how well they
are run. Extreme weather can harm
or destroy an office and business
records, and disrupt operations
through the time lost dealing with
productivity outages. A disaster can
also create conditions where the
privacy and security of information is
thrown into question.
Protecting business continuity in the
aftermath of a disaster in part depends
on being able to access and use business-
critical information. One option is to
maintain off-premise storage, but these
services can prove costly in the long run
making them impractical for many small
and medium sized businesses.
Instead, resellers can help their
customers with a far more cost effective
alternative, through the supply and
deployment of solutions that enable your
customers to turn their paper records
into digital documents. This will rid their
organisation of the paper that can be
damaged or destroyed during a disaster,
or that can become lost in day-to-day
work operations. This approach from
you can not only help to improve their
disaster preparedness but also their
business operations. For instance, digital
documents can be created so content
within the documents is searchable which
makes finding information a lot easier than
hunting through filing cabinets.
Here are three steps I believe resellers
can help organisations to take to improve
their disaster preparedness.
Reduce or eliminate paper
processes.
Many organisations are
still too dependent on paper processes.
Encourage them to use scanning tools to
turn paper into PDF documents, which is
widely accepted as a worldwide document
format standard.
PDF documents not only bring an
improvement for archival purposes but
also as a communication vehicle. Sending
digital documents for proposals and as
part of business dealings with customers
and vendors reduces the paper files that
need to be maintained and that are
vulnerable to disaster.
Today’s PDF technology is very
interactive, meaning users can perform
tasks like handling fillable forms
electronically and building hyperlinks into
documents. Helping your customers to
take steps like these in their business work
processes can go a long way in training
their staff to resist the urge to print, which
can create more paperwork and adds costs
to their operations.
Back-up documents to the
cloud.
Moving to digital documents is a
good first step. But if they are maintained
on computer systems kept in an office,
these electronic documents are still
vulnerable to a disruption that may occur
from a flood which results from excessive
rain or even something like a burst water
pipe in the office. You should ensure that
your customers are safeguarding their
business records by backing them up to a
cloud storage service, like Box, Dropbox or
one of the many other easy-to-use services.
In fact, encouraging them to adopt
the best practice of using a cloud storage
service will help them ensure continuity
of business. It will also help them in
Three steps to
disaster-proofing
customers’ businesses
With winter’s extreme weather around the corner, Steven Steenhaut,
Senior Director, Global Demand Centre at Nuance, explains how the channel can
help to turn paper records into digital documents to protect their customers’
businesses all year around
their daily operations by making it easier
for employees to capture and access
documents, wherever they are working.
For example, a remote employee can use a
web-based computer at home to securely
access work documents. Cloud services
offer file protection with centralised
security controls and reporting and
document encryption to safeguard your
customers’ information.
Make it easy to print documents
outside the office.
Even if your
customers’ organisation has made great
strides in moving towards a paperless
office, the reality of business life will
require at least some printing. Many
business transactions, such as those in
banking and real estate, are still dependent
on paper documents. And most likely, not
all of your customers or their business
partners have made the move to digital.
Remote and mobile print capabilities
can make it convenient for employees to
print documents using their smartphones,
tablets and laptops at home or on the
road and they don’t need to sacrifice
document security. Today’s print software
requires users to authenticate themselves
before printing, helping your customers
keep private information from prying eyes.
These print capabilities can even extend
for printing documents from cloud-based
storage services.
One can never be certain if or when a
disaster may strike. But all businesses can
take steps to mitigate the risk and improve
preparedness should that day come. By
working closely with customers to digitise
their documents, supported by cloud back-
up and remote printing, you can help secure
your customers’ business information so it
is always available whenever they need it –
irrespective of the weather.
One option is
to maintain
off-premise
storage,
but these
services
can prove
costly in the
long run
making them
impractical
for many
small and
medium sized
businesses
