Imagine a car company suggesting travellers use the train.
Imagine a chocolate maker recommending a sugar-free diet.
It sounds pretty unlikely.
Yet Toshiba, known for decades for its industry-leading print technology, is advising businesses to print less.
‘Print Less. Do More’ is the mantra from the tech giant.
It might seem strange, but not when you understand that Toshiba is about way more than print technology and in fact specialises in digital document management.
The era of Digital Transformation
“As businesses embrace digital transformation and replace paper documents, they open themselves to massive opportunities for new ways of working, and increased sustainability.”
Across all industry sectors, and businesses large and small, there is a growing focus on digital transformation, dramatically accelerated by the pandemic’s push to remote working.
Digital transformation means harnessing the power of digital technology to streamline and automate business processes, share information, access the insights held in their data, and collaborate anywhere and everywhere. It helps to increase efficiency, add customer value and foster innovation.
Brad Monsbourgh, Product and Marketing Manager for Toshiba’s Electronic Imaging Division says: “As businesses embrace digital transformation and replace paper documents, they open themselves to massive opportunities for new ways of working, and increased sustainability.”
He explains: “At the heart of most businesses are documents - whether those are customer records, staff information, invoices, purchase orders, accounts, procedural forms or any one of the myriad of other forms of information on which a company relies.”
“The starting point for digital transformation is to have these documents in digital format”, he continues. “A digital document is one whose information can be read, searched and actioned based on its content. They can be used for automated workflow processes, for collaboration, and for business intelligence.”
“There are two ways a document gets to be digital”, says Monsbourgh. “It can be ‘born digital’, or it may enter the organisation on paper - which is still the case for over 60% of documents - and go through a conversion.”
Toshiba technology is the ‘on-ramp’ for digital transformation.
Toshiba Multi-Function Devices (MFDs) are smart document management systems, some of the technology for which comes from Toshiba’s Sydney-based Australian R&D labs. They print, scan, offer Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and run workflow applications, and are the key to the conversion process.”
Monsbourgh goes on to explain that there’s an important distinction between scanning and OCR. “A scanned copy is just that”, he says, “a copy. It is a picture of a document, and the information in it cannot be electronically ‘read’. Whereas OCR enables true digitisation. It creates a digital document by reading the content of the paper. It can then be routed to the appropriate workflow process or filing location, based on the information it holds.”
Digitisation opportunities
“Once businesses have digitised their documents” explains Monsbourgh, “they open up new opportunity. Distributed workforces can collaborate, share and update documents, ensuring no loss of productivity. Businesses can automate key processes, eliminating human error and freeing up staff to focus on customers. They can use smart search to unlock the insights in their data, and they can be sure that documents are securely managed, in line with all regulations.”
Print smarter
The need to print does not look like going away completely, although it is very firmly on a long term downward trend. But according to Toshiba, even when paper copies are needed, technology smarts - such as secure print release and print reporting systems - encourage greater awareness and responsibility.
“Even when businesses do need to print”, says Monsbourgh, “they will do it in a much smarter and more sustainable way.”
Exciting times
The era of digital transformation is an exciting one for Toshiba and its clients. Digital documents are the starting point for digital transformation and Toshiba is the foremost expert in conversion to digital.
Their message is impactful in its element of surprise and its simplicity, as well as its fundamental underlying truth. Digital documents are the future, and digital transformation enables companies to reduce their need for printing, whilst at the same time, opening up the opportunity to work in exciting new ways.
So whilst we are not holding our breath for ‘go sugarless’ campaign from a chocolate company, or a push for train usage from an auto manufacturer, it does make complete sense when Toshiba says ‘Print Less. Do More’.
