Konica Minolta South Africa’s new print management solution reveals significant cost savings

The new print management solution enables each user to monitor and account for his/ her individual print usage and gives an organisation total control over its printing, copying and scanning operations.

According to Mohammed Vachiat, Konica Minolta South Africa's product manager, the company's Professional Services division performed a benchmarking exercise on a number of managed print services (MPS) software tools within the marketplace and these tests yielded exceptional results for the latest YSoft SafeQ solution.

"Unmanaged printing costs can cost a business between three and five percent of its revenue," he says. "The rollout of an intelligent printing solution, like YSoft SafeQ, allows businesses to monitor and account for individual usage of the company's multifunctional printers (MFPs), something that saves on costs and time, whilst changing employees' bad printing habits.”

With YSoft SafeQ, a company can define fixed rules to specific employees within the organisation. How and what an employee can print is classified by their role; for example, those with accounting roles may only be allowed to print in black-and-white, whilst those in the marketing department may be allowed to print in colour.

"This, in turn, helps enforce responsible behaviour and leads to lower costs and fewer wasted resources," adds Vachiat.

With the YSoft SafeQ print solution, employees can print and scan faster and more easily, saving them time that they can spend on other tasks. The built in features, such as mobile print, Print Roaming and Private Cloud, give users total independence.

"The new version of the YSoft SafeQ print management solution, YSoft SafeQ 5, includes several completely new features and numerous improvements to existing features, whilst still maintaining a low total cost of ownership (TCO)," Vachiat explains.

From a single web interface, administrators are able to monitor, change settings and create reports of an organisation’s device usage, including that of subsidiaries.

Further new functionalities include:

·        The YSoft Payment System – This is a key requirement for schools, universities, libraries and other institutions that want to give access to print services to a wider range of users. Each user has his or her own credit account that can be used for printing, copying or scanning. The Payment System allows users to recharge their accounts easily as needed.

·        A new browser-based embedded terminal – Faster response, a modern design and an intuitive user-friendly interface. This new generation of integrated terminals makes multifunctional devices significantly easier and more pleasant to use for users working with terminals on a daily basis.

·        Mobile Print Server – An even greater freedom of printing awaits, thanks to the elimination of the dependence on Microsoft Office and LibreOffice. The Mobile Print Server allows users to print anytime, from anywhere, to anywhere without limitations. Users merely collect their documentation at the most convenient printer whether it is on another floor in their building, at a location across the city, or even in another country.

·        Management reports - Get a complete overview of the use of your company's printing environment with one click. All the necessary information can be immediately found in clear and visually attractive reports; whether it is the specific use of each multifunctional device, an overview of the five most active users, or the costs for each department. New management reports can be tailored specifically to the needs of senior executives.

Says Vachiat: "Furthermore, YSoft SafeQ 5's new installer allows for its fast, convenient, company-wide rollout.

Its robust system, with a broad set of features, also brings you the possibility of controlling access to multi-functional printers, print-based rules, mobile printing, print roaming, credit charging, detailed reporting and much more.

When choosing YSoft SafeQ, users can look forward to significant financial savings, streamlined workflows within the printing environment and greater data security, whilst saving natural resources.

"By deploying YSoft SafeQ, organisations can contain the ever growing consumption of paper, enabling them to align document management strategies to environmental preservation goals."

For more information on Konica Minolta South Africa’s Professional Services offerings, please visit www.konicaminoltasa.com