Is less really more? Rethinking managed print services

“Print less” strategies move from revolution to evolution as organizations look for new ways to manage information - 

Far from over, MPS is evolving along with technology and business Now, many organizations are evaluating how the changing nature of MPS can provide an increasing return on investment. Today’s vision includes looking beyond managing printers to optimize and streamline workflows and business processes via print infrastructure. 

“Organizations have the opportunity to reduce costs, increase productivity, increase security and compliance and mitigate risk by developing, acquiring, or partnering for new competencies related to both print and electronic workflows,” states Holly Muscolino, Research VP, Document Solutions at research firm IDC. 

Enter smart managed print services. MPS is smarter than ever thanks to increasing capabilities, applications and analytics, and is able to not only help people optimize and manage infrastructure, but also streamline essential business processes across many industries. 

Multifunction products support MPS strategy 

Multifunction products (MFPs) act as a digital on-ramp to kick off various industry-specific business processes. Retail, manufacturing, insurance, government, healthcare and financial organizations are deploying smart managed print services in innovative and beneficial ways. For example, bank branches can benefit from MFPs for originating loans and opening new accounts in addition to accounts payable and receivables. 

Searching for structure? 

With the advent of tablets and smart phones, people are printing less by default. So it’s a natural evolution for MPS to help organizations manage other types of content. After all, documents exist in many forms beyond paper.

 Big data analytics drive MPS ROI 

The explosion of big data analytics also helps organizations reap the most benefits from their MPS dollars. With the advancing analytics trends, vendors can capture more data and get to know customers better—enabling vendors to better identify workflow optimization opportunities. 

If your organization has maximized its managed print services infrastructure, consider the additional benefits of taking the next step. With an MPS partner that listens to your needs, applies technology in an industry-specific fashion and uses a planned and phased implementation approach, you’ll be surprised at all the ways your PDM initiatives can evolve. - 

See more at: http://www.incontextmag.com/articles/2015/is-less-really-more--rethinking-managed-print-services.html#sthash.xd2FD8J1.dpuf

‘Open the possibilities’: Lexmark launches new brand

Lexmark is proud to announce the launch of our new logo as the part of the evolution of our brand. Today, we unveil our new brand to reflect on the outside what we’ve been working toward on the inside: to turn Lexmark into a global technology company that creates enterprise software, hardware and services. This will mean a merger of our software brands with our printing brands into one single, unified corporate identity.

We talked with Todd Hamblin, chief marketing officer, to discuss the reasoning behind the change and what it means for Lexmark and our customers.

Lexmark: Why a new brand and logo?

Hamblin: A brand is one of the first things that our customers interact with. It’s the tip of the spear for our visual identity. We have changed so much as a company in the past few years, and yet our visual identity remains anchored in our past. When customers look at our logo, they think print. The current logo doesn’t properly represent the company we’ve become. We refreshed the look.

Lexmark has been transformed by its acquisitions and the continued growth of our MPS business. We’ve acquired a number of strategic software companies since 2010. It was time to consolidate these brands into one corporate identity and visually communicate how Lexmark has evolved from a printing hardware solutions company to an enterprise software, hardware and services technology company.

Lexmark: The new logo features an aperture. The definition of an aperture is an opening or open space — like the opening of a camera lens — that admits light. What’s the significance behind this feature in Lexmark’s new logo?

Hamblin: An aperture can both expand and narrow. We love the visual symbolism of that – we are expanding our offering and capabilities, and combining it with our industry focused go-to-market strategies, thus how the aperture fits with our evolution as a company and what we are offering to our customers.

Lexmark: How does that translate in layman’s terms?

Hamblin: Lexmark has always had exceptional customer engagement. The aperture is a window — a window that focuses on customer pain points. This reinforces what we are determined to do, which is to continue to solve those problems. As we resolve customer pain points, we’ll also be able to open up the aperture to expand their view of what Lexmark can do for them.

Lexmark: Why green?

Hamblin: We selected the color green for three reasons. First, green is a color of rebirth and renewal, a new start for Lexmark and our family of companies. Second, the color green represents a distinct and unmistakable break from our past as well as a differentiated color in the market. Third, the color green also has application to sustainability and our commitment to being a responsible global company.

Lexmark: The new tagline is “Open the possibilities.” What does that mean for Lexmark customers?

Hamblin: With the launch of the new Lexmark brand, we are making a very visible statement to the world that this is a renewed company — an innovative global technology leader with a broader vision and bigger portfolio that goes beyond the many current expectations of Lexmark. This is reflected in the aperture feature of our new visual identity and in our tagline, “Open the possibilities.”

Lexmark: What’s happening to Perceptive Software?

Hamblin: Perceptive Software will transform from a company or division brand to a product brand. We will retain the equity of the Perceptive Software name, one that many customers know and respect, and will continue to use the Perceptive name for many of our lead enterprise software products. We will create a naming hierarchy so we can clearly communicate our full technology portfolio, and the end-to-end solutions we build from that technology, to solve our customers’ challenges.

To be consistent with this branding strategy, we are changing the internal team name of Perceptive Software to Enterprise Software.

Lexmark: What else would you like to say about the Lexmark’s new brand?

Hamblin: We feel really good about where we’ve landed. It feels true to who we are and the messaging that we want to provide. Refreshing and linking our brand messaging with our visual identity is really exciting.

Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA), Clinical images from all departments within the EMR.

Lexmark solutions for healthcare help bring the volume of content that resides outside of the EMR into a single view. Bolstered by Lexmark's Perceptive Software suite of products, we are the only vendor to bring together enterprise content management (ECM), vendor neutral archive (VNA), output management and clinical connectivity technology to help you deliver a complete patient record.

With Perceptive Software's vendor neutral archive (VNA) solution, powered by Acuo Technologies, establishes an open, standards-based technology platform for all clinical content, helping healthcare organizations worldwide manage and share all of this patient data across the continuum of care. This gives primary care physicians, referring physicians, radiologists, specialists, and ultimately the patient needed access to clinical content.

 With Perceptive's VNA you can:

• Free your clinical content from departmental archives
• Create a single integration point for all clinical content across all disciplines
• Enable interoperability and data liquidity across multiple PACS, storage vendors, departments, clinics, hospitals and beyond
• Minimize financial and operational impact, reducing costs through flexibility of choice in infrastructure, consolidation, bandwidth and "never again" migration
• Improve performance, scalability and availability, through on-demand capacity growth, with no impact to caregivers 

To learn more about vendor neutral archive and data migration services available from Perceptive Software visit www.percpetivesoftware.com/vna

Lexmark’s smart MFP ecosystem grows with new serverless capabilities, mobile solutions

Have you heard the industry term, “smart MFP ecosystem?” It’s one you’ll be hearing a lot from Lexmark.

The company has embraced this term as a way to describe our combination of hardware, software, tools and services.

The concept explains Lexmark’s portfolio of offerings and positions the evolution of our printers to help customers understand how our offerings fit together and work seamlessly to solve their pain points.

Enhancing the ecosystem

To make the ecosystem even more dynamic, Lexmark today announced new serverless solutions and apps for large and small businesses, government agencies, schools and universities.

By reducing or eliminating servers, the solutions help minimize investment related to hardware costs, IT administration and energy consumption, among others.

Included in the announcement:

Lexmark AccuRead Automate

The new serverless Lexmark AccuRead Automate runs entirely on a Lexmark smart multifunction product (MFP) embedded with Perceptive technology. It automates back office processes by helping users capture, automatically classify and route information.

“The solution trains the MFP to classify and preprocess hardcopy documents and extract data before they ever reach an ERP or accounting system,” said Rick Kallop, process improvement consultant for Lexmark. “For what this serverless solution can do, it’s a real game changer.”

“This solution is unique among MFP vendors,” said Rick Robinson, solutions marketing manager. “AccuRead Automate is ideal for small to midsize business customers who do not want to invest in server-based technology, as well as enterprise customers in distributed places, such as retail stores and bank branches, where bandwidth is tight.”

Lexmark Serverless Print Release

The new Lexmark Serverless Print Release enables users to print securely from anywhere within the organization.

Unlike standard Print Release – in which jobs are held in a server on premise or in the cloud before users print them – the Windows-based serverless solution holds the job on the local PC. When the user goes to a printer to release the job, the solution pulls the job off that person’s PC and sends it to the printer.

“With this offering, the IT infrastructure required for print can be reduced by eliminating print servers,” said Mark Vance, program manager in global marketing. “This adds another layer of flexibility to our Lexmark Print Management portfolio for customers ranging from small and medium businesses to global enterprises with remote locations.”

Lexmark Mobile Direct

Lexmark mobile printing solutions enable printing from any mobile device including iOS, Android, Windows, or BlackBerry. Lexmark Print Management is the first print management software solution to become AirPrint certified. Users can print directly into their print release queue using the native print features of iOS. A new offer for printing via direct mobile connectivity is also now available for Android.

Lexmark Mobile Direct allows an Android phone with the Lexmark Mobile Print App to print to a WiFi-enabled printer using near field communication (NFC). The benefit is you don’t have to know the address of the device or do any setup. You can simply hold your phone near the MFP or printer to connect, then tap “print.”

Learn more

Learn more about Lexmark’s smart MFP ecosystem and the new solutions at the following links:

• Lexmark smart MFP ecosystem on Lexmark.com
• AccuRead Automate