Johannesburg, 22 Aug 2007
In today's business climate, it is imperative for any company to operate at its optimum level of efficiency. Nowhere is this more essential than in the small-to-medium business sector, where resources are often slim and where improved efficiencies have a direct impact on the bottom line.
Office automation is one area in which a business can reduce costs and increase productivity significantly, provided you do your homework.
Office automation is a critical business necessity. And because you are replacing many devices, such as scanners, faxes and printers with one multifunctional device, the partner you choose becomes even more important.
Companies should view automation not only as a productivity issue, but as an opportunity to evaluate their whole way of doing business. Effective office automation is dependent on determining your exact business needs and subsequently designing and implementing a system that meets your exact specifications and requirements. When you consider the benefits of increased productivity, a custom-designed system is extremely cost-effective.
SMEs, however, generally try to manage their entire office automation system internally. This leads to a high cost of ownership. In conjunction with the pressure to optimally manage office systems, there are added challenges such as a lack of control and questions of who has access to what. The end result is downtime and in the SME environment, companies generally do not have a Plan B when their systems go down.
Additionally, in the past, SMEs were characterised by a lack of communication between finance, admin and IT departments, the result being that they did not have a full understanding of the impact of poor long-term decisions.
For example, office automation contracts would be signed for a period of five years, which could be quite disastrous if service level agreements (SLAs) were not properly in place and the technology partner turned out to be a glorified "box dropper".
The good news is that SMEs are spending more time on office automation issues because they have learnt some hard lessons in the past few years. An improved knowledge base and an enhanced understanding of technology generally have played a role too. SMEs today have a better understanding of the risks they take when they choose the wrong partner.
Key factors
Office automation constitutes the sixth biggest spend in a company, so it's not so much about making a good decision, but avoiding a bad one. Take your time making that decision and speak to as many service providers as you can. It will pay off.
One of the most important things to remember in this sector is that price is what you pay, but value is what you get. The biggest mistake you can make is to purchase on the basis of the cheapest capital price. You'll end up dealing with companies that offer no implementation or support capabilities, and having to buy consumables and spares at twice the price you paid for the equipment.
Usually, companies only pay attention to the SLA when a crisis occurs. The fact is that the SLA is crucial to office automation success, and there is no better SLA than one which incorporates mutual risk, with penalties placed on the service provider for non-delivery, non-performance and downtime. There is simply no better way to ensure your service provider delivers what you pay for.
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