Make your business fit for the future of work

| 30 July 2019

Konica Minolta reveals how a simplified IT strategy can break down the barriers that stand in the way of the modern workplace.


It’s a remarkable irony that today’s workplace can be a barrier to getting work done. Too often, there are multiple obstacles that prevent your staff from working productively, collaborating seamlessly and driving business growth. Moreover, the workplace can also be an expensive and complicated overhead, absorbing money and resources that are better deployed around customer-facing and revenue-generating activities.


So, what are these barriers and what can be done about them?


The first issue is IT complexity. Almost every type of organisation – from small and medium size businesses (SMBs) to larger enterprises with disparate locations such as construction companies and estate agents, as well as schools and colleges – continue to rely on a hairball of disconnected IT systems and processes. These are typically built up over years of operation, frequently outmoded and not integrated with one another.


Your staff are forced to devote time and energy to switching between different systems to find the information they need, while you are tied to separate and typically expensive IT contracts, each with its own operating procedures and support agreements.


Research validates this issue of complexity. Nearly one in five SMBs report that problems with IT infrastructure are one of the three most significant challenges facing their business.


Data security compounds this complexity. Securing your IT infrastructure and information assets is the key strategic IT project within many businesses. However, that can be an uphill battle. 2016 research into security among SMBs finds that current technologies fail to block many cyber-attacks and most exploits are capable of evading intrusion detection systems and anti-virus solutions. Three out of every four businesses also get a fail grade for their disaster recovery.


Many organisations – large and small – are also switching some services to a secure cloud infrastructure to reduce this complexity. In reality, this approach may increase complexity, with organisations then needing to manage a hybrid environment with certain services in the cloud and others residing on-premise.


Another barrier to work is the changing dynamics of the workforce. According to Wired Magazine, “Gen-Y workers – those pigeonholed as having an insatiable appetite for technology – are expressing both a desire for more human, face-to-face interaction and frustration with information and technology overload.”


Modern employees want the business to be built around them. They want to be able to access digital services on whichever device they choose, whether it’s working at home or travelling. The want to collaborate quickly and effortlessly with colleagues across remote offices. And they want to be free of routine, transactional, repetitive tasks, like processing an invoice, collecting information on a topic from different databases and making calculations.


Discover the future of work


It doesn’t have to be this way. An innovative workplace ‘hub’, such as the Konica Minolta Workplace Hub, directly addresses growing IT complexity by providing more efficient and effective management of the disparate array of tools, services and devices organisations rely on.


The Hub integrates all your IT into a single, unified system. It creates a robust and reliable infrastructure you can forget about, allowing you and your staff to focus on more value adding tasks – like innovation and revenue growth. Millennials will stop moaning too: with everything in one place, the hub enables fast, seamless collaboration from any device. It’s the connected office your employees crave.


With one contract and a fixed monthly price, the Hub also makes it easier for you to keep track of your total costs and reduce your overall spend. Plus, you can take advantage of a range of managed IT services, from installation to ongoing management.


Borne out of extensive customer research, Workplace Hub serves as a solution to change the way IT services are delivered both now and in the future.


To learn more about Workplace Hub and to book your free consultation, talk to us today


London, UK |

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