Smart machines ensure return on investment
Most office support staff would want one of these - an all-in-one machine that copies, scans, prints and faxes at the press of a button.
Such convergence of technology has had companies, big and small, singing its praises for making life a lot simpler.
Citizen Watches, a medium- sized company in Kwun Tong with about 92 employees, brought in Ricoh to install several of its latest multifunctional products (MFPs) to improve operating efficiency.
The systems enabled the company to manage documents electronically and provide a centralised platform for copying, printing, scan-to-e-mail and fax, said Herman Li, deputy general manager, regional treasury and accounting.
'Before installation, our departments used numerous separate devices for copying, printing, facsimiles and micro-film. It meant we could not perform the functions through a single network solution. Also, the concept of e-documents sharing and filing was not applied in our back-office routines,' he said.
Apart from improved efficiency, the new system provides a networking infrastructure, cuts down on paper use to help protect the environment, reduces hardware maintenance costs and saves storage space and manpower for handling documents.
'The payback period of such an investment was shorter than our expectations as the technology value has been added to our company,' he said.
Real estate property management company CB Richard Ellis struck a deal with Ricoh to have the use of two colour MFPs for the price of the consumables and a monthly fee based on the number of pages printed. Its Wan Chai office, which has about 140 employees, has reduced its total cost of colour printing by 15 per cent to 20 per cent through this arrangement.
Information technology manager for Asia Jason Parry said: 'It comes down to cost-effectiveness. Modern businesses are always trying to pinch pennies when it comes to IT expenditure.
'We were keeping up with technology, reducing cost per page and our maintenance is low because we didn't have to allocate in-house IT skills for the repair and installation of the Ricoh printers.'
Ricoh's senior manager, marketing and business development, Vincent Chan, said MFPs were fast replacing stand-alone copiers, printers and faxes.
Of its customer base, about half had switched to MFPs, compared with a single-digit share three to four years ago.
There were now 5,000 machines in 3,000 companies in Hong Kong, Mr Chan said.
Bigger companies, however, were slower to adopt the more advanced document processing technology as a result of a traditional 'complicated' approval process.
SMEs are more nimble in taking up new offers.
