By Louella Fernandes of Quocirca
Sharp has stepped up its managed print services (MPS) initiatives as it looks to capture more mindshare in a highly competitive market. At its UK launch of its new Optimised Managed Services (OMS) on 1st October 2015, Sharp demonstrated a hardware and software portfolio that aims to addresses the information management needs of the whole enterprise.
OMS takes a four stage approach covering assessment, solution design, transition and project management and ongoing contract management. This is fairly standard in the industry and these core services are now increasingly commoditised as the MPS market continues to mature.
Consequently MPS providers are finding new ways to differentiate, and much of this centres around managing workflow. With more information entering the enterprise in different formats – be it paper or digital – there is an opportunity for MPS vendors to support an organisation’s journey to digital transformation. As such, MPS providers offering more ECM and workflow automation tools to support the input, processing and output of a variety of document formats.
Sharp is no exception, and it is addressing the growing need to access information from a variety of mobile devices. Sharp’s Cloud Portal Office is a secure, cloud-based file sharing/document management service which is accessible from any Sharp Multifunctional Printer (MFP), Sharp BIG PAD Interactive Whiteboard, smartphone, tablet, laptop or PC.
Sharp like other manufacturers offers a tablet-like user interface to the portal which can be customised with one-touch access to the functions, files or applications that are most important to the end-user. This capability is key to offering support for broader business process integration – for example scanning and routing invoices or expense receipts to the appropriate financial application.
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