Business Intelligence for office printer management
Business intelligence software is a set of tools that businesses use to collect, analyze and transform data into meaningful information. Data visualization, data warehousing, dashboards, and reporting are examples of business intelligence tools.
Photo by Franck V
Business intelligence tools are Decision Support Systems (DSS) and basically data driven.
BI is sometimes used interchangeably with book briefing, reporting and query tools, and information systems. Business people can start analyzing the data themselves with these tools, rather than waiting for complex reports to be carried out by IT.
This access to information helps users to back up hard-numbered business decisions.
The software has gone down to affordable levels with cloud-hosted and SaaS business intelligence solutions that are within easy reach of organizations of whatever size. Historically an exclusive tool of large corporations capable of maintaining expensive processors and systems for crunching and analyzing big data, today's online hosted BI software tools are cost-effective solutions that will not cost a fortune.
3manager uses business intelligence to help any consultant or business owner to understand how office printers are performing in order to ensure a balance between hardware capacity and usage. This is to ensure optimal utilisation and highest value possible.
In a world where margins are dropping fast one needs to re-engineer the workflows to reduce time consumption but still deliver high value and solid suggestions for optimisation and procurement.
Starting with office printer supplies management we have seen the first "business intelligence" using predictions to understand "time left" in the toner cartridge, followed up by estimated forecasts.
This data helps the supplier of office printers and toners to make sure that a minimum of needed supplies items is on stock and sent in an optimal time. Not too late and not too early.
Today we see data is the whole platform for decision making and for the account manager embracing data as a natural part of the work, printer audits and status meetings are now much more simple yet even more powerful than traditional "onsite walks" to discover printers and suggest new replacements.
Status meetings are no longer planned in advance as no-one can predict the future, its based on trends and triggers. Meetings are done fast using either online meeting systems such as GoToMeeting, Skype for business, Zoom and many more, but it could be just as effective just sending an email with a message
This printer is doing a lot more than supposed, so we should consider switching place with the one from 1st floor as it will save you money.
We are not saying to skip the human meetings, but sometimes fast reactions are needed and why wait until you have time in the calendar. It's just faster and better remotely and you can instead meet up for a lunch and talk about status in general.