I spent nearly 40 minutes last year looking for a signed copy of a contract that somewhere along the line had disappeared into the void. This was after I had confirmed that she had sent the signed contract to my email account (as a scanned in PDF) – it had been downloaded to my desktop where it had then disappeared off into the void. After a few minutes of searching I found that she had put the signed contract in a shared folder on the shared drive (which I hadn’t thought to look in) and then there were physical copies of the contract in a folder on someone’s desk. She then sent a few messages on Slack asking if anyone had attached the signed contract to a message and eventually took a photo of the signed contract with her phone – which was pretty blurry.
The term “document chaos” describes a slow, expensive and stressful struggle of many businesses to manage their paper and digital documents. This is not a crisis, but the reality.
The office printer is not what you think it is
Most teams treat their printer the same as a microwave. It’s something that you don’t really think about until you need to use it. And then you are frustrated when it breaks down. But the modern multifunction printer does so much more than just print documents. It is a part of your physical workflow and your digital workflow. And how you set up the printer to work with the rest of your document management system can make a huge difference in terms of whether or not your documents move through your team efficiently.
A good MFP is far more than just a printer. They also include functions for scanning, copying as well as routing the scanned document to appropriate locations within your cloud storage / document management system. The routing of the document is the biggest time-waster for organizations that deal with physical documents and have them scanned into digital formats.
An Example of the Intake Process of Paper Documents for Many Teams Today and How This Takes Up a Teams’ Time Over the Course of the Year. For example: Someone receives a paper document. They then walk to a printer (which could be on the other side of the office). They then scan the document. The document is then downloaded to their desktop. They then rename the document to something very descriptive (e.g. “doc_final_v2”). They then email the document to themselves. They then upload the document to the appropriate location online. Three days go by and no one can find the document. If the multifunction printer was setup to automatically scan to and upload to the appropriate location online then the entire process would have taken seconds instead of minutes. As it stands, many teams are losing 30 minutes to an hour of work time per week because of how long it takes to intake paper documents.
Scanning is the underrated half of the equation
Scanning is the real action, and it’s where workflow gains are to be had.
The scanning function can be setup to automatically route the document to the relevant people within a business or location within the business’s document management system. So instead of the person who scans the contract having to email the signed contract to the accounts department for example, the NDA is automatically filed in the relevant contracts folder with a time and date stamp.
For teams that process very high volumes of documents, scanning them to a folder (or even by email) can save hours per week. Yes, this is a long time after the initial scan of the document, but the time that it takes to search for the document, rename it, and then upload it to storage or a project management tool (again) quickly adds up.
When document size actually matters
Plan sizes differ greatly between industries and companies, so it’s crucial to choose a printer that can handle all varieties of paper sizes. Most offices deal primarily with A4 paper, but some industries such as architecture, design, real estate and construction deal primarily with plans, diagrams and presentations that are A3 in size or larger. For these types of offices, an A3 printer would be more suitable as it is able to handle larger paper sizes. A3 prints are not as common as A4
As already mentioned earlier, for teams that regularly handle a variety of different documents and plans the ability for a multifunction to handle a variety of different sizes is paramount. If you work in a Architecture firm, Engineering firm, Design firm, Real Estate company or Construction company then there is a high chance that you will be regularly printing out plans, diagrams and presentations on A3 size paper. You don’t want to have to get a separate machine just for printing out the odd larger sized document every now and then. You need a machine that can handle the odd larger sized print out without any issues. That’s where an a3 multifunction printer comes in. These machines can handle a variety of different print sizes without any issues and are perfect for teams that require to print out the odd larger sized document from time to time.
(a3 multifunction printer) PRINTERS FOR VARIOUS DOCUMENT SIZES ANCHORLINK[]ENDANCHOR When dealing with all sizes of printed and scanned documents, having a printer that can handle them all is important. For offices dealing with varying document sizes such as plans, engineering diagrams, architectural drawings, real estate documents, designers, construction companies etc. a3 multifunction printer would be ideal. These devices are capable of printing, scanning and copying larger format documents without having to switch to a different machine for printing A4 sized documents.
What “workflow efficiency” actually means in practice
But in order to get the most out of your multifunction printer for printing, scanning, copying and faxing, your business needs to first look at what we call workflow efficiency. In order to better explain what this term means for your business, I have detailed below a real life example from my own experiences of how a multifunction printer can become one of the most powerful tools within a business for increasing productivity through improved document workflow.
- Documents scanned at the device are automatically named and sorted, not dumped into a downloads folder
- Printing happens from any device in the office without USB transfers or emailing files to yourself
- Copying doesn’t require someone to babysit the machine through a 20-page job
- Usage reports show who’s printing what, which matters more than you’d think when you’re trying to cut costs
These problems don’t exist because they’re magical or unavoidable – they exist because they’re left unconfigured.
A quick comparison: basic printer vs. integrated multifunction device
| Function | Basic printer | Multifunction device (well-configured) |
| Printing | Yes | Yes, including larger formats |
| Scanning | Sometimes, manual only | Auto-routing to folders or email |
| Document storage | None | Direct integration with cloud systems |
| Access control | None | User-level permissions and tracking |
| Cost visibility | None | Usage reports by department or user |
Most of the problems with printers are not actually with the printing but with the setup of the multifunction device.
The thing most teams skip
In short: treat your MFD as infrastructure, set it up once and let it run. Connect it up to the appropriate software, and then educate your users to use the MFD more than just to unjam it. It can be as simple as that to set up a solid document management system and cut down hours of document processing time per week.
Many of the issues surrounding document management and how it has become a second job for many people can be rectified by correctly setting up their multifunction printer to do what it is designed to do. By avoiding unnecessary searching, re-scanning and attempts to locate uploaded documents from weeks prior, the time that is spent dealing with all of these issues on a daily basis could be vastly reduced. But to achieve this, the printer needs to be treated as infrastructure and not as a household appliance. The common use of printers to print out boarding passes while on the go is a great example of how many people treat their multifunction printers as if they were nothing more than typical office equipment. However, there is so much more that these types of machines are capable of.
