Is your print solution enhancing your business’s resilience?

Following a year no one could have anticipated, many businesses are operating in a vastly different environment to the one they faced little over 12 months ago.

While this period has seen enormous digital transformation, as the pace of change begins to relent, now is the time for IT managers and decision makers to reflect on the technologies they have in place and turn their focus to the future to ensure it is enabling them to operate agilely, safely and flexibly.

We spoke to Sara Diggle, Head of SMB print business unit at Brother UK about how the right print solution can enhance business resilience in any environment and what businesses should be looking for.

With more and more employees adopting hybrid working practices, it’s vital that any print solution is optimised to perform in every environment. Ensuring employees can continue working effectively and efficiently from anywhere keeps productivity levels high and simplifies working practices, helping businesses to remain agile and able to cope with whatever challenges they face.

Supporting business resilience

Here are five key things that your print solution should be providing if it’s designed to support business resilience:

1. Comprehensive device options

Any print solution that is truly going to deliver for every environment needs to offer a comprehensive range of device options that are designed to support the employee whether they are working from home, office, a co-working space or a blend of all three.

Brother’s industry-leading devices range from scalable, robust SMB laser printers for the office to compact multifunction desktop devices for the home, enabling reliable, simple and secure printing and scanning everywhere.

2. Remote support

With a seemingly ever-expanding network of devices and locations, managing technical issues and providing support is becoming increasingly challenging for IT managers and their teams.

Solutions such as Brother’s remote panel, give service providers the means of quickly diagnosing and solving printer problems without the need to send out an engineer, easing pressures on the team and ensuring minimal disruption to employees.

3. Managed print service (MPS)

Implementing an MPS is one of the most impactful ways IT teams can transform how they manage their print network.

Managed print services can easily be rolled out across a business’s network of offices, as well as among home workers, while still allowing full oversight by IT managers. Not only does an MPS enable easy remote management, it also improves reliability of the network and productivity of employees by ensuring every office and employee has an up-to-date device with the latest software and can reduce costs and downtime with the automated delivery of toner and ink cartridges.

4. Enhanced security

A security breach compromises a business and often halts all activity, putting it in a potentially precarious position. According to research from Quocirca in 2019, more than one in ten of all security incidents that affected a business involved a printer, 59 per cent of which resulted in data being lost.

The number of entry points hackers can use to access company networks has grown exponentially and home printing can increase network vulnerability. Businesses need a print solution that proactively tackles these security blind spots at home and the office.

Remote management can help ensure home devices remain up to date with the latest software reducing risk, while solutions such as Brother’s Secure Print+ can protect devices in the office, with access to devices and the network limited to the authenticated user.

5. Touch free printing

Employee safety in the office is an ongoing concern and while the focus for many will be social distancing through one-way systems and re-worked seating plans, the shared usage of office technology will also present a challenge.

Decentralising print and the balanced deployment of machines will help reduce the need for users to move around the office to retrieve documents and limit the number of people congregating at devices. Additionally, to ensure people don’t need to physically engage with a device, solutions such as Brother’s Secure Print+ enables touch-free printing, using card-based authentication.

Find out more

Get in touch to find out how Brother solutions can help you improve your business’s resilience.

How a UK school reduced print costs but kept performance

The challenge:

Helsby High School wanted to reduce the 100 printers on-site to reduce costs whilst maintaining quality and efficiency to print in volume.

The solution:

The school standardised with Brother printers, choosing a selection of high-speed mono and colour lasers, A3 inkjets, and installed b-guard to help manage print costs.

Products: Brother HL-4570CDW and HL-6180DW.

The benefit:

By reducing the printer suite from 100 to just 52, Helsby High School has halved overall running costs and at the same time increased efficiency. As part of a complete printing review, Helsby High School introduced highspeed workgroup mono lasers (HL-6180DW), efficient colour laser printers (HL-4570CDW) and A3 inkjets to satisfy the requirements of the art department. Brother installed b-guard, its print management solution, to provide the IT department with complete visibility and control of their new printer suite. b-guard allows administrators to control costs by setting print quotas for students or departments, enforcing duplex printing and locking functions of a machine to certain users.

What the customer said:

“We need printers in school that can cope with high volume printing, reliably, efficiently and cost effectively. We print about 4 million copies in a year so speed and duplex printing is important, but so is quality.

The main driver for this project was to reduce our spiralling printer costs. By standardising to Brother printers, we’ve been able to halve the number of printers on site, considerably reducing our total cost of ownership with fewer printers to run and fewer consumables to purchase. Now using b-guard we can measure our print usage and adjust where printers are placed for maximum performance going forward. Brother have delivered the cost savings we wanted without losing performance. In fact, Brother’s machines are proving so efficient, reliable and good print quality, we’re achieving far more with less.”

Steve Ford, Strategic ICT Manager, Helsby High School.

Complete IT Systems and Brother

See how Complete IT Systems and Brother can help your business here.

 

 

Overcoming barriers to productivity

Brother UK recently conducted a survey of 501 IT leaders at UK SMEs. With many workers furloughed and hiring frozen, productivity has never been more important. In a series of articles this autumn, we are using the findings of the survey to help our customers to improve their productivity in any way we can.

Our previous article looked at some ways IT leaders are working to solve the productivity puzzle. In this penultimate article of the series, we look at the barriers to productivity, and how they can be overcome with the help of the right technology.

Versatility has been the key to navigating 2020

Let’s just say that 2020 has been an unprecedented year, certainly in our generation. The versatility that businesses and employees have shown has been incredible, with the speed and scale of adjustment surpassing anything any of us have seen before.

Unfortunately, this is not the case for all businesses.

Many firms were willing and able to move quickly to adapt to what has become the ‘new normal’, and have maintained and in many cases even grown business during this time. Unfortunately, many other businesses have been held back by clinging to old-fashioned processes, legacy IT infrastructure, failure to embrace new ways of working, and a lack of skills and collaboration.

What barriers to productivity are your firm facing?

The 501 IT leaders surveyed by Brother UK also went into more detail about the barriers to productivity their firms are facing. These findings are also typical across many of Complete IT’s customers and new prospects that have contacted us in recent months.

The biggest barriers are the ongoing presence of legacy working practices such as excessive meetings (34%), and a lack of the right IT infrastructure or equipment (29%). Lack of training and development to update skills (26%) also featured highly – this is something we are also addressing in another series of blogs covering user cybersecurity awareness.

In our next article in this series we will look in more detail at how technology can improve productivity.

If you would like to find out more in the meantime or discuss the ways you can harness IT to boost productivity in an affordable way, we can schedule a call to do just that!

Find out more

Give us a call on 01274 396 213 to find out how Complete IT Systems and Brother can help your business. Alternatively have a look at our main Brother information page here.

 

Time to focus on what counts

Brother UK recently conducted a survey of 501 IT leaders at UK SMEs. With many workers furloughed and hiring frozen, productivity has never been more important. In a series of articles this autumn, we are using the findings of the survey to see how UK businesses can improve productivity.

Our previous article addressed how smart leaders are investing to improve productivity. Here, we focus in on the investments that count the most, and can boost your business from survive to thrive mode during the coronavirus pandemic.

New ways of working

The changes that the whole world has seen during 2020 have been generation changing, and business is no different. While British businesses had begun a shift towards more flexible working arrangements even before the pandemic, the enforced changes and lockdowns have acted as a catalyst for making that process a lot quicker.

Reassuringly, Brother’s survey found that the majority of British SMEs are already underway with, or are readying plans to ramp up their IT investments. Underpinning this investment is the goal of improving productivity.

Technology and productivity

Of those IT leaders surveyed, it was clear that what counts is that users can continue to work as productively as possible – and in some cases even more so.

Four out of five of those leaders had active plans to invest in new technologies to support this drive for more productive working. So much so, that more than half (57%) also said that remote working has already provided productivity gains in their business. As a result, a comprehensive 82% stated that further technology investments are planned to support leaders and facilitate home working even further.

Focusing on what counts

Having identified technology as a means to underpin productivity gains, the leaders were then surveyed more specifically on what technologies would be the priority for their valuable budgets. Remote working tools (84%) and collaboration software (80%) came out on top, with modern hardware including printers also ranking highly on the list (75%).

It was also refreshing to see that not all the IT leaders felt the need to think only in emergency mode – far from it. In fact, 79% of those surveyed stated that the desire to experiment with tech was one of the main driving factors in their firms’ planned strategic IT investments over the next 12 months.

Find out more

In our next article in this series we will explore the SMB productivity puzzle in more detail. In the meantime, you can find out more with Brother UK’s handy guide – “a practical guide to productivity”.

Find out more

Give us a call on 01274 396 213 to find out how Complete IT Systems and Brother can help your business. Alternatively have a look at our main Brother information page here.

 

Smart IT leaders are investing in improving productivity. Here’s how

Brother UK recently conducted a survey of 501 IT leaders at UK SMEs. With many workers furloughed and hiring frozen, productivity has never been more important. In a series of articles this autumn, we are using the findings of the survey to see how UK businesses can improve productivity.

Our previous article addressed how smartly businesses are investing in their print estate. Here, we build on that by looking more closely at how smart IT leaders are making those investments, and the productivity gains they are seeing as a result.

Investing wisely in productivity

Brother UK’s survey found that 79% of the firms polled have allocated specific budget to improving productivity.

Of those, the main investments have been in collaboration software such as Microsoft Teams and project management platforms (82%), remote working tools such as laptops and cloud applications (82%), and hardware refreshes such as printers and tablets (74%).

The crucial role of IT in productivity

Armed with this knowledge that there are productivity gains to be made from smart investments in IT, a comprehensive 98% of those leaders surveyed indicated that they think infrastructure investments can improve productivity.

In addition to the investments they had already made, those leaders were focused on providing more collaboration software for their users (41%), remote working tools (37%), and more modern hardware refreshes such as printers and tablets (28%).

As we mentioned in a previous article, “invest to save” is one of those terms that risks becoming part of the furniture and losing all meaning. But these findings indicate that some investment for productivity is not only a smart move in the present time, but it is an almost essential move.

Businesses looking to weather the coronavirus crisis and even thrive in it need to be thinking slightly differently about how their users go about their work, and the tools they have to do it. Flexibility and efficiency are the keys to this, and good, modern infrastructure underpins this.

Find out more

In our next article in this series we will explore in more detail how to focus on what counts. In the meantime, read more about how you can boost productivity your organisation in Brother’s Guide to Improving Your Print Productivity.

Find out more

Give us a call on 01274 396 213 to find out how Complete IT Systems and Brother can help your business. Alternatively have a look at our main Brother information page here.

 

Have you invested smartly in your print estate?

“Doing more with less” is one of those terms that has been around for years. For so long in fact, there is a risk that it stops meaning anything. In fact, a search for “doing more with less” on Google brings up 2.4 billion results.

In this article, we will put a little more meat on the bone, and use a recent survey of 501 IT decision makers by Brother UK to examine how investment in your company’s print estate can enhance productivity during these times.

During the coronavirus pandemic, many businesses have needed to look for creative ways of enhancing the productivity of existing employees rather than hiring and creating new roles. With more and more pressure on people to work from home and balance family life with work life, this is not an easy task.

The survey found that awareness of the benefits of enhancing productivity are widespread and well understood. Almost three quarters (77% to be precise) of those businesses leaders surveyed have systems in place to identify opportunities to improve and eliminate wastage. This is real life “doing more with less” in practice.

Yet this still leaves 23% of businesses that have not identified processes and systems to try to improve from within.

Improving productivity is a key focus for SMEs.

An interesting finding in the survey was that 93% of the business leaders surveyed recognised the need to improve productivity. However, what practical steps businesses are taking to improve productivity varies by company size.
82% of the companies surveyed by Brother UK with more than 500 employees monitor or measure productivity. This number reduces to 77% of the companies with less than 500 employees.

Productivity and investment in your print estate

As we know, there can be a gap between recognising and saying something, and actually doing it in practice. While Brother UK’s survey results showed that SMEs are quite clear that there are gains to be made through productivity, only 21% are focussing on making additional IT investment to address it.

Brother – designed for productivity

Legacy printers can be one of the biggest time constraints and administrative burdens for SME employees. From trying to print from slower machines to the time spent on ordering supplies and carrying out maintenance, ageing printers really can be a burden to productivity.

Read more about Brother’s cloud-based managed print services that offer benefits such as automated supplies ordering and remote maintenance.

In our next article in this series we will explore in more detail how smart leaders are investing in productivity. In the meantime, you can find out more with Brother UK’s handy guide – “Solving the SMB productivity puzzle”.

Read more about how you can boost productivity your organisation in Brother’s Guide to Improving Your Print Productivity.

Find out more

Give us a call on 01274 396 213 to find out how Complete IT Systems and Brother can help your business. Alternatively have a look at our main Brother information page here.

 

Unlock your organisation’s productivity

According to the Federation of Small Businesses, across 6 million businesses, SMEs in the UK represent 99.9% of the country’s business community. The category also accounts for 61% of the country’s employment, and 50% of its business turnover. With almost 17 million people and £2.3 trillion turnover, the SME sector is the engine room of the UK economy.

Room for improvement

Yet while the sector is undoubtedly powerful and a driving force of the UK economy, it does not compare well to other European or US sectors when measured for productivity. The fact is that when measured by the key statistic of the amount of work produced per working hour, the UK’s SME sector underperforms.

During 2020, almost every business has had to make changes and adjustments to its way of working. Whether adjusting to working from home, increasing innovation of products and services, or changing the way key business functions are carried out, the coronavirus crisis has acted as a catalyst for change in the way that many companies use technology.

In many cases, the results have been positive, and productivity has increased.

Transformation through technology

Through the pandemic, the most successful SMEs have identified that changing nothing and freezing all investment is not a viable solution. With no end in sight to the crisis, simply battening down the hatches and attempting to ride it out is unlikely to yield positive results. Unfortunately, those businesses that fail to move with the times risk being left behind.

The key to managing the crisis is to focus on productivity. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, productivity is “the effectiveness of productive effort, especially in industry, as measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input”.

In other words, it is working more efficiently and flexibly.

Recognising this is one thing; but recognising how it applies to your business or IT department, and taking positive action to address it is another.

Realising potential

In a survey of 501 IT decision makers in 2020, Brother have published the results with the aim of sharing some of the innovative and strategic thinking that is taking place in boardrooms up and down the UK.

The survey focuses on productivity, and how the most successful firms are investing in IT as a means to increase it. Whether refreshing legacy infrastructure, moving to cloud-based applications and technologies, providing users with the modern collaboration tools they need, or in more efficient hardware such as printers and scanners, the need to invest for productivity is real.

Brother – designed for productivity

Legacy printers can be one of the biggest time constraints and administrative burdens for SME employees. From trying to print from slower machines to the time spent on ordering supplies and carrying out maintenance, ageing printers really can be a burden to productivity.

Read more about how you can boost productivity your organisation in Brother’s Guide to Improving Your Print Productivity.

Find out more

Give us a call on 01274 396 213 to find out how Complete IT Systems and Brother can help your business. Alternatively have a look at our main Brother information page here.

 

References

https://www.fsb.org.uk/uk-small-business-statistics.html

Four print productivity boosts you could be missing out on

As the Government injects £37 million into ground-breaking new research for solving the productivity puzzle, we spoke to our partners Brother UK to find out the top five ways in which IT leads can help to save time and ground efficiencies via their print estate.

In August, the Government unveiled a £37 million plan to open a new UK Productivity Institute in Manchester, in a bid to strengthen recovery post-Covid, level up wages and improve living standards across the country.

It’s the latest in a line of efforts from government, academics and businesses to crack the productivity puzzle: how can we ground efficiencies that help workers to focus on more productive tasks?

Research from Brother UK has revealed that almost all IT decision makers see technology as essential in improving productivity, and 84 per cent now view it as their priority focus. Read the full research results here – Solving the productivity puzzle.

We spoke to Sara Diggle, head of SMB laser & scanner business unit at Brother UK, to discuss how a piece to the puzzle lies in firms’ print estates.

Having complete oversight of networks, using faster performing devices, embracing mobile print and staying print secure are each simple ways businesses can save time, and money.

1) Get complete oversight of your print network

Now more than ever, gaining complete oversight of systems and networks can feel like an impossible task for IT leads. This is especially true with the emergence of the ‘hybrid workforce’ post-lockdown, as employees continue to mix working between the home and office.

But having oversight of print estates is simple. With solutions such as Brother’s proprietary BRAdmin platform IT leaders are able to monitor and manage printers wherever they are. This means support teams can stay in one place, with employees not having to wait around for issues to be resolved. It’s a great time-saver for IT and office managers juggling the needs of a decentralised workforce.

2) Stay secure and prevent lost time

When replacing, upgrading or expanding print estates, speak to your supplier about the level of security devices offer. Even a minor security breach can seriously impact productivity, and older, cheaper models are often an easy back door through which criminals can access a business’s IT network.

Brother’s suite of print solutions are loaded with state-of-the-art security features that help users protect systems against cyberattacks and data misuse – boasting features like automatic intrusion detection software, end-to-end encryption and PIN and ID-card-protecting printing.

3) Consider if slow printers are sapping productivity

Old devices could be costing businesses more than they think, as employees queue to collect documents slowly released from legacy hardware, creating knock-on effects for lost time.

Flagship SMB laser printers for business, like Brother’s high-performance MFC-L9570CDW, are combining fast and reliable printing with high yield toners and impressive paper-handling features to ensure that they work more quickly for longer.

4) Use enterprise platforms to maximise workflow efficiency

Creating seamless end-to-end workflows really helps to improve employee productivity, and platforms like Microsoft SharePoint and Google G Suite have come into their own as businesses adapted to lockdown life.

Brother’s SMB print and scan solutions are compatible with a wide range of enterprise platforms – whether on-premise or cloud based – including SAP, Citrix, Kofax ControlSuite, Papercut and SafeQ6, allowing integration with an almost endless list of popular cloud software. This is helping lots of tasks, from barcoding to CRM, to be easily integrated with print systems.

Making the day go faster

Ultimately, a fresh look at print estates can help to unlock lots of opportunities to save employees time, helping staff to carry out tasks that bit quicker. These bits of saved time add up through working weeks and whole teams to give companies a big productivity boost.

Read more about how you can boost productivity your organisation in Brother’s Guide to Improving Your Print Productivity.

Find out more

Give us a call on 01274 396 213 to find out how to order and claim your cashback.

Complete IT Systems and Brother

See how Complete IT Systems and Brother can help your business here.

 

4 steps to reducing business printing costs

Cost management is a vital component of any technology solution. So Complete IT Systems and Brother have some simple solutions designed to minimise the financial impact on organisations.

1: Save on toner

Reduce toner consumption when printing, copying and receiving faxes.

Save money by reducing the frequency of replacement consumables purchases, while also having a positive impact on the environment. And better still, using Brother’s “Toner Save Mode” does not affect the print speed or memory usage of the device.

2: Condense pages

Make an organisational commitment to using less paper by condensing multiple pages into a single sheet of paper.

N-in-1 printing reduces paper usage compared to standard printing helping companies to reduce their environmental impact and work towards their green credentials.

3: Reduce the number of pages users can print

Save money by controlling the number of pages each user can print.

Brother’s “Secure Function Lock” enables administrators to set daily, weekly or even monthly print allowances for each user. Once the limit has been reached, the Brother device will stop printing until the user’s allowance is increased or reset. Compatible devices also support NFC card authentication.

4: Implement NFC authentication

Retrieve printing documents in the confidence that they have not been read, copied or taken by anyone else.

The secure print function ensures documents are not printed until they are released by the machine’s control panel by using an NFC card.

Find out more

Give us a call on 01274 396 213 to find out how to order and claim your cashback.

Complete IT Systems and Brother

See how Complete IT Systems and Brother can help your business here.