Like it or not (and many do like it), the hybrid workplace is here to stay. According to Keypoint Intelligence’s 2021 Future of Office Survey, 40% of workers “like working from home and hope to continue doing so fulltime after it’s safe to go back to the office,” while another 32% want to split their time between home and the office. And workers appear to be thriving in this new work environment: 56% of those who work from home permanently because of the pandemic and 43% of hybrid workers said they are more productive than when they worked in the office full-time.
Although workers are more productive (as well as happier with their work/life balance and all the time they don’t spend commuting), this new environment is introducing us to new challenges, too. In our 2021 Future of Office Survey, respondents said that their biggest challenges were associated with data security, accessing and working with documents, collaborating with others, as well as dealing with business processes where paper documents intersect with mostly digital processes.
| What Business Challenges Do You Find Cost the Most Time Whilst Working from Home? |
| Keypoint Intelligence’s Future of Office 2021 US Survey |
Overcoming Hybrid Workplace Challenges with Canon Cloud for Business
When you look underneath the wrapper of Canon Cloud for Business, you’ll notice that it’s really just an amalgamation of CSA’s existing portfolio, including Therefore and Laserfiche (information management); uniFLOW Online and PrinterLogic (print and scan management); as well as Vera, mxHero, and Barracuda (security) mixed with professional services.
Canon Cloud for Business digitizes your documents and business processes, and then securely hosts them in the cloud where they can be accessed by all. That way, it doesn’t matter if you’re at home, in the office, or at some coffee shop—if you can connect to the internet, then you have access to everything that you need to be productive. It also absolves the IT department from having to purchase, deploy, maintain, and replace additional IT infrastructure, and allows those with little-to-no IT resources to enable their own hybrid workplace.
Overcoming Data Security Problems in Your Hybrid Workplace
Computers make our lives a lot easier. But they also introduce new security risks that we haven’t had to consider in the past. In Keypoint Intelligence's Future of Office survey, data security was the biggest challenge reported, selected by nearly half of all participants. CSA’s Cloud for Business has a few solutions to help businesses protect themselves.
With solutions from Barracuda and mxHero, you can protect yourself from your biggest vulnerability: your email inbox. The most popular attack vector (far and away) is email with 91% of all attacks starting there, according to the folks at Barracuda. Barracuda’s lineup of email security solutions include tools to defend against phishing attacks and prevent business email compromise. Meanwhile, mxHero enables businesses to scan and store emails and their attachments in a cloud service (like Box, for example). The solution can also protect against viruses and phishing attacks, and help businesses adhere with privacy regulations like HIPAA.
Canon has also partnered with Vera to protect documents throughout their entire lifecycle—not just in your inbox. Vera is an enterprise digital rights management solution that enables businesses to encrypt, track, audit, and manage security policies for all documents, even after they’ve been shared with others (or stolen).
Overcoming Access and Collaboration Problems in Your Hybrid Workplace
The next three biggest challenges with hybrid working revolve around accessing and working with documents and collaborating on it with others. And that’s where information management (IM) solutions like Therefore and Laserfiche come in handy. Since all your documents are stored digitally in the cloud, workers can access and work with them at home just like they would in the office. You can even work on one document with others at the same, no matter where you or they are, and you don’t need to have a specific software installed locally to do so.
Dealing with Paper in the Hybrid Workplace
Another big hybrid workplace challenge revolved around printing, copying and scanning, as well as converting information from digital to paper (and vice versa). Workers didn’t have access to hardware—if they did, businesses didn’t have control over those devices—and it was a pain to print from or scan to applications over a VPN.
CSA’s Cloud for Business also has an answer for these problems. For those who don’t have their own hardware (or had trouble keeping that hardware supplied), CSA has announced their “Home Office Print as a Service” subscription (HOPaaS). You can think of it as MPS for home users. For a low, predictable monthly fee, Canon equips users with MFPs, ongoing supplies replenishment (shipped right to your door), and support for remote workers. CSA’s lineup also includes uniFLOW Online and PrinterLogic, which helps businesses enable secure, seamless printing and scanning from the business applications that drive your business.
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