Forget about having an office printer that you and your team can easily access to print documents for your meeting! With the advent of remote working due to a global pandemic, both employers and employees started facing communication challenges. As more and more of their interactions happened digitally, people had to find different ways to effectively exchange information at work. This digital era has steered the world in a revolution that could be equivalent to the one surrounding the invention of the printing press.
Expert Phil Mazzilli from Qualcomm and Mopria Alliance compared this new era of communication to a digital highway: “Information moves into two lanes that go in the opposite direction. One that goes from paper to digital, and the other one from digital to paper. It’s up to the company to determine how they are best enabling employees to get important information on and off that digital highway”.
From Paper to Digital
Do you recall those grey filing cabinets that you would open to look for the document you needed? This is not ancient history. Paper documents and filing cabinets have been the way to organize information in an office or at home for decades. But with remote working, people can’t simply walk over to their colleague’s cubicle to share that document. The file must be digitized – and Mopria can help you thanks to the Mopria Scan app. This innovative technology enables you to scan directly from the MFP or scanner you have at home directly to your Android device. Without the ability to physically interact with a printed document in an office, most companies have moved to the exchange of digital documents, whether that be via email, remote conferencing solutions, or shared cloud solutions.
From Digital to Paper
Although in a digital culture, we still live in a physical world where many businesses rely on printed documents to function, whether be for records or legal reasons. Also, some customers may expect only physical delivery of paperwork: what if your affiliate only wants invoices in paper form, you can’t exactly refuse, can you? Not only can some businesses still require printed files, but many employees still find printed copies facilitate productivity: from cutting down distractions to helping with operability and readability – we all know the feeling of our eyes watering after staring at a screen all day! When turning a digital document into a printed one, you can use the Mopria Print app: with this service, you can connect and print to any Mopria certified printer without additional set-up. The move to a digital world is an inevitable step in this modern age, but that does not mean that paper format has been left behind – or that it should be left behind.
As offices start to slowly reopen, the workspace continues to change and adapt: we may never go back to be fully remote, just like we may never be in-office only. Companies that will succeed in the future are those who understand how to take advantage of technological innovations that reflect the demand of our digitally-driven age and can effectively connect the digital and physical realms. Mobile print and mobile scan apps are cutting-edge technologies that can bridge the gap between these worlds within a company, using a device that’s easily accessible and that every employee is already armed with.
