There are a plethora of technologies employed in every office environment, whether a one person operation at home or in a brick-and-morter location with dozens of employees. Copiers Plus Director of Communications Drew Smith shares insights into the role technology helps his company — and his customers — do business. 

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What technology trends are impacting your industry? It used to be that equipment features and specifications drove the agenda. Now, dealers must incorporate digital solutions, cloud integration, document security and print management offerings into their strategies. Deploying successful programs requires specialized talent in both sales and service, not to mention constant training on new practices and updates. With these changes, many dealers have decided to sell to larger conglomerates rather than investing in their communities they serve and tapping into their talent pool. At Copiers Plus, we are large enough to meet our customer needs and small enough to care. We focus on adapting to meet the needs of our customers and ensuring they have an option of a local company that will treat them with the detail needed for a successful document workflow solution. 

What new technologies does Copiers Plus employ in serving its customers? A key technology we are excited about is a comprehensive remote monitoring solution called KYOCERA Fleet Services (KFS). It is helping our customers save both time and money by allowing IT professionals to monitor devices in real-time, anticipate issues, and update firmware remotely during off-peak hours. In addition, it provides data that helps determine how machines are being utilized in terms of volume and color usage. Coupling this technology with our custom tiercolor billing offering, which allows our customers to pay only for the amount of color they print on a page rather than a standard rate, we have been able to optimize how are customers approach their printing procedures. 

What is the biggest challenge faced by your customers and how do your products and services help them overcome it? Many companies utilize a variety of software, equipment and applications throughout their day, but they are not incorporating them all into a relevant workflow. We look at how customers are accessing, storing and securing their documents and then work to leverage their existing investments to produce a workflow that is intuitive, efficient, and customized to each end user through secure access protocols. 

How has technology improved your customer support experience? We have been able to adapt to technological advances by offering remote support and problem solving either over the phone or through logging in remotely to clients’ systems to make changes. In addition, we have the capability of deploying equipment that is powered by the KFS remote monitoring solution, as previously mentioned, which allows permitted IT professionals real-time access to devices across their fleet. Organizationally, we utilize vehicle tracking on our service vehicles to maintain fast response times and aid our dispatchers in route management. By ensuring we adapt our processes and operate at peak efficiency, we are able to offer lower prices to our customers without sacrificing our service standards and offerings. 

In what major ways has technology made your company’s job easier in delivering quality products and services? We work with great partners like Kyocera Document Solutions and OnBase by Hyland, that help us to provide cutting edge equipment and digital solutions. By having this technology on the partner level, we are able to rest assured that when we meet with a client, no matter what level of sophistication they may require, we have the tools to either deploy a specific solution or work with one of our partners to create a customized build-out. Our in-house ability to provide solutions is a game changer and provides our customers with unparalleled efficiency at a much lower cost than has ever been attainable. 

What does the next wave of technological advancements hold for Copiers Plus customers? Our customers will spend less time manually processing documents. We believe the upcoming wave will be even more of a shift to a workflowcentric model and automation. Presently, applications, security and document management have taken center stage. We have already started shifting the paradigm with our proprietary Discovery Process that encapsulates print fleets, document management and networking systems, in anticipation that this isn’t a trend that will die out. Rather, we believe it will spread into the varying verticals and sizes of organizations we serve. Today’s users want things done fast and are aware that their data is vulnerable. Seemingly every day there are new applications and software programs that enter the market that will aid us in providing custom workflow solutions that are efficient, secure and competitive in regards to investment. 

What is Copiers Plus doing to maximize the next generation of office technology for customers? We are constantly engaging new technologies as they are released, especially in relation to solutions and software. We continue to add on to our portfolio of offerings and partnering vendors. Staying nimble is a key component to ensure that we are adapting to the needs of our customers, and truly offering a customized approach that helps them to manage their documents in an efficient and secure manner.