Despite the best endeavours of the world’s technology providers, the paper mountain in every office just keeps growing. The nature of the mountain is changing, however, due mainly to new digital office processes and email’s ascendancy as the business world’s primary communication medium.
There’s no question my personal productivity would be impacted more by the loss of our internet connection for day, than it would by the phone being cut off or ‘snail-mail’ not being delivered.
At recent Canon New Zealand roadshow for corporate clients at Auckland’s fabled Eden Park, I was introduced to eCopy – hardware/software program that integrates printers and scanners with email servers, fax servers, and document management systems. Essentially, it’s system designed to turn paper-based procedures into electronic processes, and caters for our increasing reliance on email.
eCopy involves touch-screen tablet that attaches to Canon’s new imageRUNNER multifunctional printers, allowing users to interface with number of business processes at the touch of button – such as “scan to email”, “scan to fax”, or “scan to document management”.
Email sent using eCopy appears in the sender’s email outbox, and the recipient’s inbox, as being from the sender rather than from an anonymous device. What’s more the corporate address book is automatically available on eCopy devices, so users don’t have to manually upload email addresses.
Security is priority. Users must log-in with their network password in order to send documents, and the eCopy unit maintains logs of activity by named user.
Clifford Chance, the world’s largest law firm, uses eCopy to scan and mail documents both within and external to the business in encrypted format. The technology is said to be used by around 30 percent of the world’s top 100 legal practices.
ECopy Desktop is also designed to whittle away at the paper mountain. This PC software allows users to mark up electronic documents as though they were hard copies. This means an ability to white out information, stamp, highlight, or annotate text, etc – all without printing copy. And, OCR ability means scanned files can be converted to editable text in PDF, Word, Excel, or HTML format.
Canon’s roadshow was chance to catch up on wide variety of new technologies, from digital cameras to high-speed printers. One other device in particular caught my eye – the extremely intelligent SMART Board.
It’s easy to see why these interactive whiteboards make powerful teaching tools. SMART Boards are now equipped with DViT (Digital Vision Touch) technology to precisely pinpoint contact by finger or stylus on display screen. It’s all done with digital cameras and sophisticated software. Users scroll by placing two fingers on the touch-sensitive screen and dragging them up or down or side to side. They can also place finger on the screen and touch another finger to the right of it for right mouse click. Ingenious!
Cheerleaders, an ex-All Black guest speaker, the hallowed turf of Eden Park on the eve of the English slaughter, and solid line-up of leading-edge business technology all added up to compelling Canon roadshow.
Glenn Baker is regular contributor to
Management.
Email: [email protected]
