Inkjet & Digital Printing
Konica Minolta launches Workplace Hub Pro
Friday 17. July 2020 - Konica Minolta has announced that it is launching a new member of its Workplace Hub service portfolio on 1 September 2020, Workplace Hub Pro, to further strengthen its all-in-one IT offering to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Joining the Hub and Edge solutions in the next-generation Workplace Hub, the newly launched Pro combines powerful, smart office printing technology from Konica Minoltas bizhub i-Series A3 colour MFP range with best-of-breed software and managed IT services - all in a single solution.
Designed with the particular IT needs of small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in mind, Workplace Hub Pro combines the innovative Workplace Hub software with high quality bizhub i-Series printing and scanning capabilities to deliver a powerful solution for your intelligent connected workplace.
The advanced solution offers customers print and copy speeds ranging from 25ppm to 65ppm (pages per minute) and scanning speeds range from 100/200ipm to 140/280ipm (images per minute). Workplace Hub Pro also offers a comprehensive portfolio of features and applications including print and document management, cloud backup, remote VPN connection and Wi-Fi management to give users the convenience of working with a single provider for all their technology needs.
“For many of our SMB customers, the Workplace Hub portfolio has been a true game-changer with regard to their IT capabilities. Smaller businesses in particular only have very limited IT resources at their disposal”, says Olaf Lorenz, General Manager of the International Marketing Division at Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe GmbH: “Our customer research has identified the five biggest SMB challenges: an ageing/non-scalable IT infrastructure; few or no internal IT management resources and knowledge to manage ever-growing IT environments and different providers; lack of storage and proper backup; low level of security and little transparency on costs. In addition, the recent developments of the COVID-19 crisis have created a further challenge for the customers, making remote access and collaboration a clear and urgent necessity for them. It highlights the impairments their work processes face by an inadequate and out-of-date IT infrastructure and the need for VPN access as well as smart IT set-ups. The solutions from our Workplace Hub ecosystem help our customers address all of these challenges and focus on their business”, Lorenz explains.
These scalable, secure and reliable hybrid IT solutions integrate both physically and virtually even into the smallest office environment, providing digital work tools the users require. With managed IT services accessible through these solutions, Konica Minolta can take care of all of its customers IT needs, allowing even small companies to benefit from an IT infrastructure otherwise only accessible to larger companies.
Petr Mohyla, owner of Konica Minoltas Workplace Hub customer Mohyla CZ s.r.o., explains: “As a small business, we dont have much space for IT equipment – but we rely on having a robust IT infrastructure to provide a high standard of accounting services. With Konica Minoltas Workplace Hub, we now have a complete IT solution from the same space that used to be just a printer!”
Konica Minolta is constantly optimising and re-defining its services and solutions according to fast-changing markets and small business requirements, aiming to provide its customers with exactly the solutions they need. “Particularly in smaller businesses and organisations, printing, copying, faxing and scanning are still very much at the core of everyday business routines. Recognising this need, we decided to provide the full scope of paper-to-digital and digital-to-paper work processing in a Workplace Hub solution, and so we built in the full IT infrastructure into our fully functional and powerful smart MFP bizhub i-Series”, states Lorenz.
This set-up also allows for a seamless integration of information and business process management, be it digital or paper-based. To ensure the highest level of security, the IT solution and the MFP functionalities run on two separated systems. “Workplace Hub Pro is designed as the heart of our smaller customers intelligent connected workplace, simplifying both their IT and paper-based document processing. At the same time, it keeps capital as well as operational costs low and flexibility high, as customers only pay a consistent monthly fee”, Lorenz concludes.