By: Steve Hoover
The Future of Work. Digital Transformation. Digitization. Workplace of the Future.
We’ve all heard the buzzwords, but what does this actually mean? And how does this translate to the organizations we lead or support?
I hosted a panel on this exact topic at the Gartner Symposium on Monday, accompanied by my colleague, Victoria Bellotti, a research fellow and social scientist at PARC; Gytis Barzdukas, head of product management for Predix at
GE Digital; and Gillis Jonk a partner alumnus and independent strategy consultant for A.T. Kearney.
The future of our organizations and a growing percentage of our customer bases are considered digital natives – those born or brought up during the age of digital technology, individuals who are comfortable with technology and who expect businesses to evolve with technology capabilities and trends. And these digital natives expect businesses to be natively digital, where services are mobile first, always connected, context-aware and personalized.

However, creating a natively digital experience for your company isn’t about taking an old process and digitizing it. It’s about observing your business, evaluating it and looking at the whole thing differently. CIOs need to look at technology through a different lens and adapt a new mindset.

Think back to the days before Uber. This company completely shifted the approach to transportation. They started by taking a look at the whole problem of mobility and completely restructured it. Businesses that are born natively digital – like Airbnb, Netflix, Amazon and Square – have been able to completely revolutionize the industries they play in. That’s because they encourage interaction with customers in a way that’s easy to understand and navigate, personal, and in tune with their needs and interests.
But how do legacy companies approach digitization? Gytis discussed […]

A professional services organization recently realized they print 72,000 pages for training every month. And that 80 percent are thrown away after the course. The surprising thing? It’s not unusual.
Xerox has created a new workbook to help organizations of all sizes uncover your paper “sins.” It will also show you how going digital could help you serve customers at less cost, reduce time to revenue and make communications more responsive.

Download our interactive “Paper-to-digital transformation workbook” to:
Identify the job functions that would benefit most
Discover a simple 4-step transformation process
Get buy-in and successfully change behavior
Go ahead and take the first step toward a more efficient, streamlined and “less paper” business.
Download our workbook here. Source:: xerox news

By: Tom Oldfield, President of Advanced Office Solutions (AOS)
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are the backbone of the Canadian economy—representing the vast majority of businesses in our country. However, the typical SMB usually has to deal with a limited budget and IT resources. As a result, they often struggle to control costs and keep essential technology such as printing equipment running smoothly.
This is where Managed Print Services (MPS) can offer tremendous opportunity to SMBs. A partnership with an MPS provider can allow SMBs to gain control of printing costs and tackle the huge productivity drain that can come from an un-managed print environment.

At the beginning of the partnership, a MPS provider will conduct a print assessment to determine existing printing volumes, behaviours and costs. This fact-based report will typically identify areas for improvement, offering opportunities that can reduce costs by as much as 30 percent. Just imagine what your business could do with these funds.
The information gained during the print assessment will help an MPS provider design the optimal print environment for your office, with the intentions of reducing costs, streamlining workflows and increasing productivity.
Considering that printer downtime can have a significant impact on productivity and office morale, an MPS provider uses software to detect potential issues with printing equipment and proactively addresses these issues before they interrupt workflows. Also, by managing the purchase of printing supplies such as toner, SMBs can realize cost savings and eliminate the waste that comes from employees over-ordering supplies or purchasing incorrect supplies.
Another key way that Managed Print Services can benefit SMBs is with the transition to a paperless workplace. While we hear so much about businesses going paperless, approximately 75 percent of SMBs still rely heavily on […]

By: Erin Gillard
The average Canadian doesn’t think too much about security in their day-to-day lives. We lock the door when we leave the house in the morning, and we may even have a house alarm. Of course we lock the car, but we’re a little annoyed by those security patches IT installs on our computer that cause us to have to restart – always at the most inconvenient times.
But what about the rest of our valuables that need protecting? I’m talking about data – the 2.5 quintillion bytes of data we produce every single day. The type of data that houses our personal information, company competitive information, banking records, passwords, customer accounts – and a host of other information that cyber-thieves would love to get their hands on.

Cyber-theft is a huge and growing problem for Canadian businesses of all sizes. A 2016 survey conducted by Toronto-based systems integrator Scalar Decisions Inc., reported that businesses receive an average of 40 cyber-attacks each year – and that number is on the rise. One vulnerability is all it takes. Protect all access points to your data including your networked printers.
Check out the infographic below to see just how wide the gap in cybersecurity protection is in Canada and follow these tips to make your Xerox device more secure:

Don’t connect your Xerox device directly to the public Internet. Make sure it’s behind a firewall or router so that only you and your users have access to it. This keeps outsiders from accessing the machine and interrupting your business. Please check with your IT department if you’re unsure.
Don’t leave the administrator’s password set to the default. Change it so that unauthorized individuals can’t guess easily guess it and […]

Guest Post by Ajay Dhingra, President & Owner, Bay Street Business Solutions
When sensitive documents are left on an output tray of a multifunction printer (MFP), it can clearly present a security risk. However, it is important to understand that these devices are capable of so much more than standalone photocopiers of days past. They have evolved into highly sophisticated devices that include embedded web servers and offer the ability to connect with a variety of host applications and cloud-based services.

Given the amount of sensitive data that passes through MFPs on a daily basis, they have become the target of malicious hacks and data breaches. Fortunately, there are several steps that you can take avoid such a disaster:

User Authentication – Many companies are choosing to add authentication to their MFPs such as passwords, swipe cards or features such as secure print to ensure that the document isn’t output until the user is standing at the device. Varying levels of access can be granted at the MFP such as blocking certain employees or guests from more sensitive material, higher-level functions or server-level access. By securing your MFP, you can create an audit trail to help ensure that your confidential documents are not being inappropriately distributed.

Secure Mobile Printing – There’s certainly a demand for mobile printing, but it’s important to consider the security risks that this could present if you were to allow this capability. Some best practices would be to require user authentication and restrict access for certain users. Create a policy outlining who can, and can’t, access your network and utilize the authentication measures as mentioned above to ensure your data stays safe.

Encryption & Data Wiping – An effective way to secure […]