How They Work and How They Can Help Your Business
If you run a business where printed matter is integral to your success or even a significant part of operations, you know that maintaining an effective print infrastructure can be complex and expensive. You may have already considered implementing a cloud-based solution to handle or augment your printing needs. In this blog, we look at the ways you can convert to cloud printing and the potential benefits of doing so.
How Cloud-Based Printing Works
For decades, computer-based printing has required a hard-wired connection, with cables, printer drivers, servers and a team of IT professionals to service everything. With cloud printing, you won’t need any of those. You’ll be able to print directly from any device—a desktop/workstation, smartphone, tablet or laptop by sending digital information to your printer by way of the cloud. With cloud-based printing, you can send a job to your printer from anywhere, as long as you can connect to the cloud or the Internet.
With cloud-based printing, users don’t have to worry about print driver installations. Typically, a user can access the cloud, find the right printer and print documents. You can use a “cloud-ready” printer or install a cloud print connector on your existing printer.
Setting up cloud-based printing is simple, fast and significantly less expensive than hard-wired printing solutions. In addition, all software upgrades tend to be automatic, requiring no effort on the part of the user.
Cloud-based print applications offer a number of other benefits:
- Cost savings—There’s more to the cost of printing than the ink, paper and toner. Studies show that the amount spent for those supplies is about 10% of the total expenditure to maintain an onsite printing operation. With cloud-based printing applications, you don’t have to maintain print servers and can reduce a lot of the costs of maintenance. In addition, you won’t have to pay an IT crisis management team.
- Increased productivity—With cloud-based print applications, your employees can work from anywhere. You can create efficient processes to manage the workflow. Because cloud-based printing is administered from a central interface, it’s easy to update or change print policies, and to monitor compliance and use.
- Greater flexibility—If you’re like most businesses, your print needs fluctuate on a regular basis. With cloud-based printing, it’s easier to scale printers, users and devices. Furthermore, it’s much easier to test a print solution before you make a commitment.
- Better control of print security—There’s typically less risk of the loss of data with a cloud-based print application.
- Cloud-based printing helps you go green—Studies show that cloud-based business applications can reduce carbon footprints by up to 90%.
Cloud Printing Options from Northeastern
At Northeastern, we sell and service Savin/Ricoh office equipment solutions. We can help you convert hard-wired printing operations to cloud-based printing with Ricoh’s Print Cloud product. Print Cloud facilitates printing from any enabled device without the need for drivers or servers. The process is pretty simple:
- Send your file to Print Cloud from any device
- Print Cloud will send a release code back to you
- The release code is entered into a multi-function printer (MFP) and the document is printed
With Print Cloud, there’s no need to be connected to a network to print. In addition, because Print Cloud is a service, you don’t have to buy or install any software. Print Cloud also lets you control a number of print commands from your device, including the copy count, the layout, whether printing will be on one or both sides, and whether you want the document stapled. Print Cloud will also allow you to print an email with attachments and any links. Print Cloud also supports Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, web pages and images.
As an alternative, Ricoh offers an app that allows you to use Google Cloud Print. The app is embedded in supported Ricoh MFPs to facilitate mobile printing, as well as desktop printing from PCs, Macs and Chromebooks.
Let Northeastern Office Equipment Help You Set Up Cloud-Based Printing
At Northeastern, we’ve met the needs of customers in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and across the country for more than half a century. We know from decades in the business that, at the end of the day, it’s all about the service. There’s not much benefit to a great price if you can’t get your office equipment serviced effectively. That’s why we
- Have a dedicated, full-time dispatcher to take your call. You’ll never sit in an online service queue or get lost in an automated phone system.
- Keep a parts manager on site all the time to ensure your questions are accurately and quickly answered
- Maintain more than a million dollars in inventory, so that we’ll have the part you need
- Employ service technicians with an average of more than 15 years of experience
- Make certain that our technicians have sufficient inventory with them at all times, so they can fix your problem on the first call (which we are able to do more than 90% of the time)
- Operate our own delivery service, so you won’t have to wait on a third party
- Offer “extended back office” services to our customers, making necessary phone calls and handling other matters to resolve office equipment concerns
We work with all types of businesses and entities, including K-12, colleges and universities, professionals, and state, local and federal governments and agencies.
Contact Northeastern Office Equipment Today
Call us at (631) 845-9500 or (212) 714-3508 for a free initial consultation or use our easy, online instant- process for prompt and comprehensive help with any office equipment need, including cloud-based printing applications.
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