The digital age has granted modern technology like computers and mobile phones to simplify your personal and business lives. From the business angle, you can streamline your workflow capabilities, increase productivity, widen communication capabilities, and give your business the security it needs to protect sensitive information. Approximately 75% of businesses have embraced digital transformation in their printing operations.

With all these technological advancements, the question arises: do you really need business copiers in a modern office? The answer is yes!

A recent study concluded that the average U.S. office worker still uses 10,000 sheets of paper annually, so why are business copiers still indispensable today?

This article will explore how businesses digitize their documents, iterate why physical copies are still necessary, and outline the benefits of business copiers in the digital age.

How Companies Digitize Their Documents Using Business Copiers

Several tools can assist in the transition to a paperless model for your business, and using your business copier will help with this. Digitizing office documents is one such essential process. Here are some methods companies use:

Scanning Solutions

Using a scanner will convert your physical documents into digital files for storage. It allows for file storage to be viewed or shared internally and externally with ease, negating the need for space-consuming filing cabinets.

Modern Business Copiers even scan text from your documents into a computerized and editable file, further streamlining your ability to process workloads.

Document Management Systems (DMS)

Investing in DMS software will enable your business to store, manage, and access your scanned digital documents efficiently. It’s as easy as scanning your document and uploading it to your DMS software.

Availing yourself of DMS software is also helpful for compliance and collaboration within the office. It includes audit control and permissions, ultimately giving you more control over the day-to-day running of your office.

Cloud Storage

After scanning from your copier or uploading directly to your computer, you can make use of the cloud. Instruments like One Drive and Google Drive have become staples within the office environment. They let anyone within your office store access and edit files from anywhere, giving your employees more flexibility. Whether you’re working from home, on-site, or on the go, this accessibility helps productivity more than ever before.

Electronic Signatures

Gone are the days when you needed to be present to sign physical copies, NDAs, or any other important documents.

Although you might need to use your copier to upload documents to the system, using services such as DocuSign can give your business the ability to sign incoming documents electronically and send them online. This will reduce the need to print.

Are Physical Copies Still Necessary?

As modernization pushes your company toward digitizing, some physical paper copies of your documents need to remain, leading to the need to have business copiers in your business:

Legal Requirements

It’s good practice and, in some cases, required by regulation to retain hard copies of certain documents. These can include contracts, medical records, tax documents, invoices, and legal documents. Offices should have such physical documents to ensure compliance with these requirements.

Customer Preference

A customer may have a preference for having physical copies of relevant documents. Business copiers will help fulfill this request by efficiently printing copies of documents for record-keeping and archiving, ultimately assisting with maintaining a good relationship with the client.

Backups

The digital age has downsides, and issues with an online system can lead to data losses. Keeping a hard copy of documents stored online can act as a backup in case of a downed system or a cyberattack.

Security

Sometimes, a physical hard copy is better than a digitized document to protect sensitive information.

Keeping such copies will prevent access on a need-to-know basis information and ultimately minimize the risk of a data breach.

Benefits of Business Copiers

Using business copiers in your office offers many benefits but shouldn’t be considered as competing with the digitization of documents.

Instead, think about the benefits of using a copier in symbiosis with digitization, using them together to provide your office with the best tools possible to maximize efficiency.

Quality Productions

Having modern business copiers guarantees your office produces high-quality documents. With any kind of printed document, such as presentations, forms, legal documents, and marketing resources, your copier will produce quality finished pieces that couldn’t be done with a standard printer.

Additionally, your copier could then be scanned into your online system to be distributed internally or externally as you please.

Enhanced Control 

Having a physical copy of your materials, like marketing documents and training information, might be beneficial to the daily running of your business.

In addition, the cost of outsourcing any printed work might eat into your budget, so it’s imperative to have the right copier to produce high-quality materials on-site for less time and money. Doing this at your office will give you far more control over the materials produced from start to finish.

Efficiency

Business copiers are designed to produce large volumes of printed works quickly. This can lead to saving a lot of time that can be spent on other work.

Versatility

Having the tools to complete a range of different projects from one station is another benefit of using business copiers.

From scanning a document to your screen and printing needed paperwork to faxing information to another client, using your business copier allows its user to perform most office duties in one place.

Protects From Cybercrime

Modern business copiers offer various tools to protect data, including encryption and authorization codes.

Save Space

A copier takes up much less space than the many single-use devices they replace, which is especially useful in an office setting where you need to be resourceful about square footage usage.

Save Electricity

Instead of keeping several appliances running at once, having a copier means you can worry less about electricity costs at the end of the month. According to some sources, an Energy Star-certified printer can further lower costs.

Lower Operating Costs

Aside from electricity, upkeep and maintenance costs are limited to only one appliance. This means it will be cheaper to run and to fix in the long run.

Bridging the Gap Between Digital and Tangible

While digitizing is important to keep up to date with the latest working trends in a modern office, a copier system is far from obsolete. The role of a copier in the office has evolved to support digitization and provide a useful redundancy when data is at risk of being lost.

While document digitization has revolutionized the way an office operates, physical copies are still necessary to keep up with legal regulations, client preferences, and security reasons. The modern office in the digital age will benefit from integrating both digitization and maintaining physical documents in conjunction with each other.

A business copier for the foreseeable future remains an integral part of the modern office setting for its efficiency, versatility, and cost-effectiveness. This popularity is shown in how the revenue growth of the printers and copiers market worldwide has grown by 2.15% in the last year.

If you’re in Mill Creek, contact our office at Copiers Etcetera to learn more about business copiers and related services. You can also visit our blog page for other resources.