Making cloud-based services more convenient, secure and affordable for any organisation

The benefits of the cloud
Broadly speaking, the benefits of using cloud-based business services fall into two main categories. Firstly, there are considerable advantages in running a lean IT function within an organisation, by removing avoidable overheads in terms of purchasing dedicated systems and having to employ professionals to oversee them.
 
Secondly, there are also considerable benefits in terms of flexibility and availability of services for IT users. Services need only be purchased when they are required and are immediately available as you scale your operations to meet demand.
 
All the services in one place
With many organisations looking to embrace the flexibility of Digital Transformation (particularly to facilitate remote/hybrid working and business agility), cloud-based services provide an obvious and compelling solution. For many this means moving from an over-reliance on physical documents to streamlined electronic workflows which help to automate the laborious but essential regime of document processing.  
 
This was the inspiration for Konica Minolta’s cloud-based Workplace Pure platform (formally known as bizhub Evolution), which was developed by Konica Minolta Europe itself in 2016 and has been continuously expanded since then. It provides cost-effective 24/7 access to a platform of constantly evolving services including centralised upload to cloud repositories, cloud print, secure guest print, smart document conversion and translation - all automated and streamlined from a single trusted source.
 
Workplace Pure boosts everyday productivity by centralising your business workflows and promoting well integrated daily work habits, enabling better collaboration practices. Put simply, it expertly and automatically organises your workflows and manages how your team interacts with them. 
 
Workplace Pure’s integration of external cloud storage service (including Dropbox, Google Drive, MS OneDrive, and SharePoint Online) ensures business teams have full but secure access to these storage services, enabling them to work seamlessly in unison and avoiding potential data silo, sharing/synchronising, or security issues.
 
The Cloud Print service delivers ultimate flexibility through location-independent secure printing from various applications, with fast and easy deployment. You can print directly from an application (like Microsoft Word), via a browser on your smartphone or tablet, or from your Google environment or via Microsoft Universal Print, all via Workplace Pure using secure follow-me authentication. With Workplace Pure, organisations no longer have to worry about their print infrastructure - printers, servers, drivers, applications and network. Konica Minolta's management of the print environment ensures that it is always up-to-date and compliant with the latest security standards. In addition, companies save costs: no upfront investment in print infrastructure is required and they only pay for the services they actually use. Another advantage is that Konica Minolta can flexibly adapt the print environment to the organisation's needs and scale it up or down - an important point against the background of increasingly dynamic markets where flexibility is more in demand than ever.
 
The Secure Guest Print service makes it easy for visitors to print from their mobile devices in a simple and highly intuitive but fully secure way, making it perfect for hotels, libraries, the educational sector and more, helping any organisation to stay secure.
 
The Convert services take paper or digital documents and convert them into Word, Excel, or PDF, creating a fully searchable document. If you need documents to be rapidly and accurately translated into another language, Workplace Pure’s Translate service uses powerful AI-powered machine translation from almost any source language to almost any target language (all via smartphone/tablet, desktop computer, or Konica Minolta’s bizhub devices, 24/7/365).
 
On top of this, Workplace Pure’s EasyFlow service allows you to upload documents (such as invoices, contracts, holiday requests, expenses, and reimbursements) and to route them electronically to a designated approver to be signed digitally with a single tap or click. With the flexibility to customise the workflow for different document types, users, and approvers, this avoids the risk of lost or mislaid documents and makes the whole process faster and more reliable, reducing unnecessary workload and frustration.
 
Highly secure
Workplace Pure can support any organisation with its transformation to full document workflow management, but without the need for a deep technical understanding or worry of how to implement these solutions in-house. Uniquely in the market, Workplace Pure is directly hosted by Konica Minolta as the provider (with no intermediate platform) which requires no additional software installations.
 
The data centre Konica Minolta uses for this is the Open Telekom Cloud (OTC) data centre in Germany, where all shared data is hosted and which is protected by the strictest EU legislation including GDPR. To guarantee the highest possible data security and availability, all services are distributed across Scaling Groups via three Availability Zones. This means that the data security, which is always a paramount concern for any organisation, is fully assured with Workplace Pure.
 
Unlike rival services it doesn’t just run on a multi-function printer either, all the services can be fully accessed via a tablet, laptop, or smartphone browser, making it extremely easy to use and flexible to the needs of your organisation and your team. 
 
For further peace of mind, Workplace Pure has also been tested and approved by trusted third-party organisations, such as its recently renewed Chrome Enterprise Recommended technical certification from Google, which demonstrates its complete suitability in running on the Chrome OS. The platform also has a highly respected Buyers Lab Gold rating from Keypoint Intelligence – the world’s foremost authority on imaging software, hardware, and services – along with being featured in the BLI Pick Awards as “Outstanding Cloud Document-Services Platform”.
 
Essential business agility
Whatever sector you work in, your organisation needs to be able to focus on its core activities rather than spending considerable time and resources on managing documents. This is especially true in the post-pandemic landscape where competition is fierce, and your competitors will be vying to meet vigorous demands from customers, whatever the situation.
 
As a trusted and experienced Digital Workplace Provider Konica Minolta has designed Workplace Pure to be the perfect solution for any organisation looking to embrace a lean and agile cloud-first business operations strategy. The solution is already supporting organisations of all types in the real world.