Modern printers, copiers and multifunction devices are more and more powerful with each generation. But if you manage a fleet of printers, how do you harness and control all those capabilities?
For many organizations, the answer will be print management software. Print management software coordinates all processes that take place on printer fleet and optimizes print jobs across the organization. Here’s what you need to know about print management software in 2021.
Managed print software solutions are ideal for enterprises and can be used to manage a variety of printing tasks for large networks of printers. Print management tools ensure that employees’ computers are optimized and printing, scanning and networking.
The Managed Print Services (MPS) programs offered by GFC are designed to help a business streamline management and minimize costs associated with printing and imaging. The direction of managed print services is to reduce - reduce total costs, reduce the number of devices, reduce the number of manufacturers and models, reduce IT time spent dealing with devices and to reduce the number of vendors. With the right print management tools, an organization can:
There are dozens of software solutions available, but we will focus on two industry leaders- PaperCut and uniFLOW. PaperCut is one of the most popular printer management tools, which tracks printers’ usage and identifies wasted resources. Papercut includes over 50 one-click reports available for online viewing, printing or export.
Once you have insights into how your machines are being used, print management software can help you control jobs according to policies that encourage and enforce good behavior. For example, you might route large jobs to dedicated high-speed printers, display popups to ask users to confirm single sided output or automatically stop print jobs with incorrect paper sizes.
UniFLOW printer management software is another powerful tool for any IT administrator. This Canon product now offers a cloud-based solution as well as on-premises software services. This means documents can be scanned directly from devices and into your business workflows. Once authenticated, users can scan documents and enter them into a project, no matter where they are on the company network.
Once entered and processed, documents can be exported automatically to a selection of destinations. With uniFLOW, users can scan documents and send them via Email or directly into a folder or backend system, including Microsoft SharePoint, OneDrive, Google Drive, Evernote and Dropbox.
uniFLOW Online also offers pre-configured scan workflows which are ideal for scanning batches of repetitive documents and operation records like orders, invoices, picking lists and delivery notes. uniFLOW Online will detect different file types, split each batch and even create the document title or populate metadata.
Another advantage of modern print management software is if your staff is working from home with a professional grade device, they can scan, batch and file documents, process them in the cloud and validate from their desk. Thanks to pre-populated file names and metadata, it is fast and straightforward to search and retrieve documents when they are needed.
Each business has unique printing needs but print management software and a managed print program are important steps to save your business money and manage workflows. For a free, no-obligation consultation on how you can improve your business technology environment, contact us today. 
