In our continuing quest to make BLI Solutions Center the most comprehensive source for document imaging software competitive intelligence, we’re proud to announce that we’ve added four new product categories: Fax Servers, Mobile Printing, Universal Print Drivers and MFP-embedded Connectors. This expanded coverage will help resellers identify even more solutions aimed at solving their customers’ business challenges, and our growing library of Briefs and Reports will help those resellers educate clients about time- and money-saving products in the document imaging arena.
For example, while basic point-to-point fax machines may be fine for small offices, mid-size to large organizations that process large volumes of fax pages are better served by a fax server platform. These solutions centralize incoming/outgoing fax documents and offer a host of convenience and money-saving features, such as an audit trail, the ability to initiate faxes from a PC, integration with e-mail for sending and delivery, and the opportunity to eliminate costly dedicated phone lines. Fax servers are a must for your clients in the legal, real-estate, healthcare or financial fields.
We’re also focusing our attention on mobile printing. As knowledge workers within an organization have become increasingly mobile, they have grown to rely more and more on devices such as smartphones and tablets not just for communication but also for content consumption and creation. Today’s mobile and remote workers are also less likely to have one specific printer at their disposal, and instead need access to whatever output device is most convenient at the location where they happen to be. Mobile printing solutions help organizations accommodate such fluidity. They allow end users to print from—and in some cases, scan to—mobile devices (Apple iOS, Google Android and Windows Mobile phones and tablets, for example) that cannot run traditional desktop print drivers. Another benefit is the convenience of “pull” printing, where mobile workers can print to any supported device where they happen to be, instead of having to retrieve a document at the printer specified when they submitted the print job.
Another important value-add for resellers are each OEM’s Universal Print Drivers (UPDs). As enterprises amass a fleet of printers and MFPs, managing myriad print drivers can be a headache for IT administrators and a source of frustration among end users, especially as new output devices are added to the network. Potential driver problems can also extend to small and mid-size organizations seeking compatibility among varying devices. Universal print drivers (UPDs) can alleviate such hassles by providing a single driver that can function with any output device from the OEM, and in some cases printers from other manufacturers as well.
Rounding out our new coverage is a dedicated category for MFP-embedded Connectors. Every leading printer and MFP manufacturer now offers an embedded platform for running software “applets” on the device to extend its capabilities beyond basic print, copy, scan and fax functions. MFP-embedded connectors are one key group of such applets. While not as feature-rich as full-blown Document Capture & Workflow solutions, these connectors allow end users to scan documents and route them to a back-end repository (such as Microsoft SharePoint) or other destination quickly and easily, right from the control panel of the device.
As we work to add more solutions to these new categories, we’re also looking into the future to expand Solutions Center even further. Please use the comments form below to tell us what new categories and content you would like to see on our service.
