The concept of office automation has evolved considerably over the past decade, keeping pace with developments in IT and demands by users for improved, more streamlined document management systems.
This is the view of Zandre Rudolph, a business manager at Rectron, who says the development of "multi-function" technology has resulted in productivity enhancements in photocopying, document scanning, printing and faxing.
"Now vendors are combining all these disciplines and the technological advances of each into a single machine at a price and form factor that enables deploying one in each workgroup within an organisation," says Rudolph.
According to Rudolph, the total cost of ownership is a critical part of purchasing any office automation product, but for the same price as one or two machines, a single multi-function machine is able to deliver the functionality of four different machines.
From a technical perspective, Rudolph says vendors are now designing multi-function machines with specifications that include hard disk drive memory storage and embedded print servers, enabling the implementation of comprehensive office automation and document handling solutions.
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