Picture this. You’re an office manager, and you’re starting to see employees back in the office. It’s great! There’s energy all around, a low hum of chatter and the occasional beep from the printer in the corner – nothing to worry about. Well, time to take those rose-tinted glasses off.

Printers, as well as Multi-Function Peripherals (MFP), are an underestimated source for data breaches. Sure, when you think about a ‘hack attack,’ traditionally your mind would go to PCs, web applications, file servers, data centers, etc., because that’s where you can get access to file systems, credentials and crucial private information. A successful MFP breach can result in a hacker accessing all of the above. Your everyday office printer comes loaded with the ability to integrate with the corporate network to allow for scan to email and copy-and-scan accessibility. Most worryingly, breaches can happen without anyone knowing they have occurred. And a lack of MFP security and maintenance makes breaches even easier to execute.

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Data is the raw material that powers successful businesses. Data-driven organizations are investing in big data and data analytics to get the visibility they need to make smart decisions based on facts instead of opinion and guesswork. From doctors using data to accurately diagnose diseases, to credit card companies using big data to prevent fraudulent transactions, data is rapidly transforming what’s possible across many different industries. (more…)

When you work in a specific industry, you get immune to the abbreviations and various terms that are shorthand for the activities and capabilities of your business. Just ask a new employee at Konica Minolta how we bat around acronyms such as MIT, Op, PP, GCE, SSE, ECM, RPA, BPO, FM and MX. Well, our team is going to add one more acronym to the mix – IIM – which stands for Intelligent Information Management and how the practice will be referred to moving forward. IIM will replace the former term used to refer to the practice, ECM, or Enterprise Content Management. However, content management will still be one of the core solutions we provide to our customers.
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Spotify, Google Drive, LinkedIn, Instagram. Cloud computing is already engrained into your everyday life. And now, enhanced by the last year of remote work due to COVID-19, it’s taken over your work life too.

From servers to finances, eight out of ten businesses now expect more than half of their IT infrastructure to be cloud-based by the end of 2021, and 43% expect their entire IT infrastructure to be cloud-based. And why not? It’s quick, safe, cost-effective and efficient.

But despite such heralded benefits, many companies are still missing the critical final piece of the cloud computing puzzle: cloud printing. We’re here to explain why that’s happening, and why it shouldn’t happen to you.

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You don’t need me to tell you that the way we work has changed. The COVID-19 stay-at-home orders effectively created a mass experiment in remote work, one that many businesses and employees feel was – for most parts – a success. And as such, our return to work will no longer be as simple as going back to how we were. The office will no longer be the epicenter of all actions; instead it will become the central hub for a flexible, dispersed workforce who may only spend 50% of their time at a common physical location.

This hybrid working model sounds great in principle, but so far it’s only really been talked about in theory. So here are some practical tips on how to approach this for your business, and why it requires seamless connectivity coupled with access to the right digital tools to make it work long term.

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As entrepreneurs continue to create mind-blowing applications and services that have the power to transform our daily lives forever, it can be overwhelming to try to keep up with the impacts of technology on our lives, our psyches and our society.

In light of that, I’ve handpicked the following TED talks that focus on the future of work and what lessons we can take away from the pandemic to improve our work/life balance. Take some short breaks throughout your day to watch one or two, and equip yourself with wisdom that will carry you through the evolving world.

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We bided our time, persevered and rode the wave of the paperless office that was unappealing for many law firms; all while gaining those needed muscles that would need to be at the ready to weather the recent pandemic storm. Law firms didn’t have to look far for valued partners who already designed automated workflow solutions capable of pure magic, it seemed. But, there were many law firms who knew that legal scanning tools were the way forward to increase productivity and eliminate many manual processes, all while reducing costs. Suffice to say, going paperless was no longer an option, instead, it’s a reality that is here to stay. We confess that we are happy to not be on the back-burner or at the end of the long list of “nice to haves” or “we still have time.”

Today, I am excited to share a Q&A I had recently with Catherine Brill, Product Manager at our Solutions Engineering Center, about this topic and how Konica Minolta has been at the forefront of providing legal scanning solutions to the legal industry.

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Digital Transformation (DX), the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, changes how companies operate, how they deliver value to customers and how their employees work. Accelerated by the pandemic and the sudden need for remote work, DX was undoubtedly one of the top buzzwords of 2020, and we have reached a point where it is no longer an option for companies to resist. If a company was not on the journey to DX prior to March 2020, they most certainly are now.
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As the United States begins to emerge from the global COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare landscape that was already undergoing digital transformation (DX) is significantly moving in acceleration mode.  IDC stated that “in response to the global pandemic, healthcare and life science organizations experienced 2 years of DX in 2 months.¹”  The urgency toward a more connected and digital experience in healthcare has accelerated at a staggering pace. Virtual care or telehealth, touchless registration, AI and cloud technologies have all taken their rightful place as the current technology leaders, and are transforming the face of healthcare delivery, as well as healthcare IT, in the US and beyond. Recent goals from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) are also driving the industry with key standards for improved interoperability. With all of the recent advances in healthcare technology and updates on policies, however, there is still much to accomplish.

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The pandemic decidedly accelerated the necessity of a digital transformation strategy, with many businesses taking the opportunity to evaluate how they can improve performance through the use of digital technologies and new business models to drive organizational change. But getting into the details of what setting up a digitally mature business actually involves is not always clear. (more…)