Confronted with rising costs of doing business and concerns about how to optimise and secure their environments, South African businesses are looking to advanced Canon workspace solutions to address their challenges.
So says Frederik Möller, Business Development Manager at Canon EMEA. He says costs and efficiency are top of mind for local customers: “Many customers are now focusing on improving customer service and productivity, but controlling costs is a top priority. They are working to transform their entire environments, starting with improving business processes. They are also seeking to improve data security, to protect both the businesses and their customers,” he says.
Clients frequently enquire about cost considerations, ranking it among their top five questions. Many seek to avoid substantial initial investments. Implementing a big-bang project entails considerable expense and rapid change, often posing challenges. Our distinct advantage lies in guiding clients through a phased and meticulously costed approach, ensuring a smooth transition to an optimal workplace, Möller elaborates. "We meticulously assess prevailing business challenges and pain points, developing a comprehensive roadmap geared towards delivering benefits incrementally."
Cloud benefits
Möller highlights that Canon offers workspace solutions both on-premises and in the cloud, yet observes a rising trend in the adoption of cloud-based solutions. "Opting for on-premises solutions entails additional maintenance and operational expenses. In today's business landscape, companies increasingly seek comprehensive features at minimal costs. Canon's cloud-based solutions address this demand by providing all necessary features at a significantly reduced expense. Moreover, our cloud solutions offer high scalability, accommodating current needs while alleviating financial burdens. Clients also benefit from the flexibility to scale up their operations and incorporate additional processes as needed," he explains.
Embracing optimisation
He emphasises the importance of scalability, particularly for local businesses, which tend to expand their processes significantly once they begin their digital transformation journey with Canon.
"After transitioning from paper-based forms to digital, ideas start flowing freely. We typically assist customers in addressing immediate, low-hanging fruit to realise immediate benefits. Once they witness the positive outcomes of the initial project, enthusiasm grows and they express eagerness to digitise everything," he explains.
Möller illustrates this with a customer example involving a health and safety department tasked with completing nearly 40 checklists daily. "Previously, these checklists were printed, signed and filed daily. We introduced e-forms for end-users, who now complete the checklists on tablets. This digital transition also enables them to enhance their reports with photo and videos evidence," he shares. Both staff and management have embraced the new digital system and are eager to replicate similar projects across various departments within the organisation.
Moving from manual
Another popular use case is accounts payable, which Möller says is normally a manual process. “We look at how they receive the statements and invoices, and the processes they use. We then automate that environment.”
Canon implements solutions such as Scan2x – an intelligent document-capture solution with automatic document recognition, IRIS OCR and compression technologies and invoice line item extraction capabilities, and Therefore document management software. Therefore offers enterprise-grade content management and transforms document workflows. It enables organisations to automate incoming information flows, index information and create a central database to capture and store their documents and information, with secure access, storage, capture, editing and processing.
Says Möller: “Our Scan2x solution will read and validate the information against an existing PO on the system. It then goes to Therefore for final workflow stages, taking a process that once took a day or two and completing it in a couple of minutes."
He highlights an example of an e-commerce site that was falling victim to multiple accounts payable fraud attempts. “We deployed Scan2x to flag fraudulent invoices as they came in, reducing financial risk to the organisation at the point of scan,” he says.
Möller highlights that Canon Workspace Solutions can provide many additional benefits in terms of compliance and risk management within a customer's environment.
For further information, click here or contact Canon SA on CZA-Marketing@canon.co.za.
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