What does award-winning digital transformation look like?

One stop shops and simple fixes: the digital transformation world is full of them.

However, anybody with experience in this field knows that digitalisation isn’t an overnight change. It takes careful consideration of processes, long-term investment, and a focus on a selection of solutions and services.

With new technology emerging in the market almost everyday, it’s essential to embrace future-proof strategies that can evolve alongside an organisation’s wider needs.

We’ve been helping businesses navigate their digital transformation journeys for many years, and this is reflected in our award-winning portfolio of hardware and software solutions. A broad offering means we empower businesses to create a full digital ecosystem. We help connect printers, scanners and collaboration tools in a cohesive package to create efficiencies across every part of the company – with one point of contact for all technology.

Last year, it wasn’t only our customers recognising the quality of our solutions. We cemented our long-standing recognition by independent industry bodies with a new set of awards.

Printing, copying and scanning. Whether this happens at home, in the office or elsewhere, efficiency and security are crucial for effective hybrid working practices.

Our advanced uniFLOW Online cloud print and scan management platform already leads the way, and is used by thousands of organisations globally to optimise processes and bring workspaces together. NT-ware, the Canon-owned software developer of the uniFLOW suite, has now achieved number 1 market share in Western Europe. As 2022 came to an end, it secured a roster of accolades too.

Buyer’s Laboratory Inc. (BLI) awarded uniFLOW Online the Outstanding Cloud Output Management Solution 2023 award, for the fifth year in a row.

BLI also chose uniFLOW Online for their Solutions Pick Award 2023 too, in a nod to its blend of output management and scan/capture automation.

In recognition of the solution’s intuitive design and powerful security features, Document Manager (DM) selected uniFLOW Online as its Print Fleet Management Solution of the Year 2022.

When businesses need to control document workflows, manage print and server costs, boost information security and make hybrid working more productive, uniFLOW Online can help them do it better.

Successful digital transformation means keeping tight control over document workflows while identifying and improving processes that slow businesses down.

To that point, our Therefore Online enterprise content management (ECM) platform won three awards: BLI’s Solutions Pick Award 2023, DataMaster’s Best ECM Solution for HR 2022, and Info-Tech Research Group’s Leader in the ECM Market.

Therefore Online helps organisations get more done in less time. It pulls data from inbound documents like invoices and putting it straight into existing processes, using smart version control for better, error-free collaboration. It also takes the hassle out of forms and e-signatures, all driven by the platform’s cutting-edge AI engine – which can deal with all of these challenges and more.

Many businesses deal with hundreds, even thousands of documents coming in each day. Often, they’ll be varied. Think invoices, contracts, reports, purchase orders: sorting through these large batches manually takes valuable time.

Our IRISXtract document processing solution makes that obsolete, freeing up employees for more strategic tasks. As a result, Document Manager singled it out for its Data Capture/Recognition Product of the Year 2022, in light of its seamless integration, smart data extraction, and extensively automated data extraction.

A3 and A4 prints remain the most widely used and versatile formats, and choosing the right device can boost an organisation’s versatility. For example, our i-SENSYS MF832Cdw won the BLI Pick award, A4 category 2023, and our imageRUNNER C1538iF won another BLI Pick award, A4 category 2023.

Rachel Dean, Technical Editor at Keypoint Intelligence’s Office Group, explained why the two devices stood out:

“Flawless reliability and intuitive functionality keep teams working at optimum productivity. Adding to that are a variety of flexible mobile and cloud options, while fast print and scan speeds enable efficient collaboration – all these things speak to today’s modern office, which includes hybrid workers.”

Equally, businesses that ignore sustainability – especially for their core operations – will be penalised by their customers. And they’ll see their overheads rise. BLI found that our laser A4 devices in particular were significantly ahead of the market in terms of energy efficiency, and selected Canon for its Most Energy Efficient Laser A4 Brand Award 2023-2025.

Pete Emory, Director of Research & Lab Services US/Asia at Keypoint Intelligence, noted:

“Collectively, the 12 Canon [laser A4] devices used 37% less energy than the next two competitors combined.”

We also scooped an iF Design Award 2022, and then finally, BLI chose us for its ‘Line of the Year’, A3 category 2022 and A4 category 2023 awards, reflecting our continual investment in these areas.

Digital transformation has many moving parts, from information security and collaboration to automation and workflow optimisation. But the decisions businesses make now will affect their success for years.

Working with a trusted partner to identify their needs can make the process easier – and make sure money spent on overhauling the business for the digital age has the maximum impact.