A new look at productivity, security and cloud-driven efficiency for today’s office workers

The advent of hybrid working has driven a quiet revolution in many businesses. Employees now often work from multiple locations, including the office, home, co-working spaces or even while travelling using mobile devices.

Coupled with the near-universal adoption of cloud solutions and increasing uptake of digitisation and automation, employees now have unparalleled opportunities to process documents in ways that work for them.

Being able to print to different devices in different locations and scan confidential documents securely is critical to effective business processes, enabling efficient filing, retrieving, and archiving of documents without compromising information security.

As a market leader in printing and document management, we recognise that common workplace print and scan behaviours shown by office workers don’t always take full advantage of their organisations’ existing cloud solutions – and the same goes for using the full capabilities of their print and scan devices. That means the investments businesses have made into cloud technology is not being maximised.

By making simple changes to how individuals print and scan, organisations can increase productivity, saving time on laborious and repetitive tasks while improving information and document security. Becoming a more efficient organisation can also support progress towards sustainability goals.

Do you recognise any of these challenges?

• You have to travel to the office regularly to print documents or deliver important forms for processing.
• You have to send documents to your email address and then share them with your colleagues as attachments, or documents have been shared with you the same way.
• You have to store potentially confidential documents, such as CVs or contracts, on your computer.
• You struggle to find a document, remember what you called it, or where you stored it.
• You find yourself scanning stacks of documents using the normal scanning function on your office multifunction printer, then have to separate the files and name them manually back at your desk.

Scanning to the cloud instantly improves document management as documents are automatically uploaded to a central cloud storage location. This, in turn, makes it easy to search for, access, and retrieve information, improving collaboration as teams can readily access and share scanned documents, wherever they’re working from.

Additional reporting shows that employees can lose up to two hours per day searching for information, and over 76% admit to keeping local copies of their documents. holding back collaboration.

Since digitisation reduces paper use, it also helps organisations become more sustainable, while offering cost savings on paper, printing, and physical storage.

Finally, storing sensitive documents locally and sharing them via email can have potentially catastrophic consequences for an organisation if security is compromised because multiple unmanaged copies of documents are scattered on various devices across different locations.

To tackle these problems, our combined award-winning Canon cloud-enabled multifunction devices and market-leading Cloud Connectivity Solutions offer seamless integration with all popular cloud storage solutions used in business today - including OneDrive for Business, SharePoint and Teams from Microsoft, Google Workspace and DropBox.

Canon Cloud Connectivity Solutions cater to a wide range of workplace needs, supporting more productive print and scan behaviours from the level of individual users up to large enterprises:

• Canon Cloud Connector
• An entry-level solution for smaller organisations that enables cloud printing and scanning with minimal IT resources.
• uniFLOW Essentials
• For customers who require secure print as well as additional document management features such as accounting, centralised devices, and user management.
• uniFLOW Online
• A scalable cloud-based print and scan solution that delivers seamless hybrid working, a wider choice of devices, and multivendor support. It also enables advanced scanning options, including batch scanning of multiple documents, and filing and indexing of documents based on the data they contain ready for further processing. Ultimately, there’s no one size fits all Cloud Connectivity Solution. It depends on your organisation’s individual needs. What workflows do you have? How big is your organisation? What are your hybrid working arrangements? Whether it’s cloud-enabled print and scan devices, solutions, or services, the Canon Digital Transformation Services portfolio can help you make the best use of your existing investments, including your favoured cloud storage solution, to unleash productivity and strengthen information security across your organisation.