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Small is Growing Big
From color printing and copiers to wireless networks, the technology, gadgets and processes we use are changing the way we work
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Business New Haven
12/08/2003
By: Melissa Nicefaro
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Companies everywhere are downsizing.
But it's not just the number of employees that is shrinking - it's the size of the equipment they use.
With their flat-panel screen monitors, computers themselves are getting smaller. "Desktop" no longer connotes a computer that takes up the entire top of your desk.
Even telephones, copiers and printers are smaller.
Rick LaTorre, president and owner of ABM Business Systems in Guilford, notes that business systems have evolved dramatically in his 12 years in the business. Along with the switch from analog to fully connected devices, the digital revolution has typically meant smaller devices and machines as well.
ABM represents Sharp Electronics, selling and leasing black-and-white and color copiers.
"One of the biggest changes we have seen is the ability to have one reliable product that can do it all affordably," LaTorre says.
Not only do all-in-one machines take up much less room than their single-function counterparts, but they typically carry a lower supply cost compared with traditional desktop machines.
"Multi-function machines are very economical to operate," LaTorre says. "Copier machines are generally reasonable to operate, but when you look at fax machines or stand-alone color printers, you look at very high costs per page. Any time we can incorporate this technology into console-type products, it is like night and day cost-wise."
Copy machines don't just spit out black-and-white copies any more. They take document input for scanning, and are capable of sending documents to desktops, e-mail, amongst your network, or for printing, faxing and plain old copying.
"At first there were some growing pains, getting into the digital environment and digitally connected machines," LaTorre notes.
But "Our industry has changed significantly. In the early 1990s, everything was analog and by the mid- to late '90s, everything was becoming digital. Digital is more reliable because there are less moving parts and it does not using mirror technology, as is used in analog. Digital uses LED lights so there's much better quality and much less of a chance of copy quality issues."
December 8Digital equipment is suitable to all types of businesses, from a large corporation to a home office.
"Looking at it from a small office or home office standpoint, these machines can be compact and having one product to handle all the needs is a good idea. That way you're not scrambling around for an ink cartridge for a fax machine or a color cartridge for a copier or printer. One supply item covers everything."
But one concern is that the more functions a machine - any machine, be it a television/VCR combo or a telephone/answering machine - performs, the greater the chance of a malfunction bringing all processes to a grinding halt.
"That's a concern I hear regularly, but representing a manufacturer with very reliable technologies is the key to peace of mind. Having a service organization like ourselves that can respond on the same day or even within one to four hours, it makes a moot point of an all-in-one creating more problems."
Nevertheless, he says, in some instances an all-in-one may not be the best solution: "Having a number of devices may be a better solution for very paper-intensive industries. For example, a copier/printer and a separate fax machine may work best for a mortgage company or a newspaper."
One big change on the copy machine horizon will be the introduction of color copying into smaller machines.
Prices on these new models start at about $500.
"In the next couple of years, the biggest thing we're going to be seeing is small machines with the ability to output in color. Sharp is launching a product in December that is going to be a small, low-cost, color and black-and-white solution."
December 8Small therefore is, in a word, growing.
Stacy Kivel, director of technology services for Pinnacle Decision Systems, says her own job has been made easier by the latest technologies.
Her favorite gadget, the Pocket PC, can be a catch-22, though.
"It's a phone, calendar, contact manager, Internet browser and e-mail provider all in one," she explains, "so I can sit on the train and call someone, I can look up contacts and put in notes about a meeting with them and I can search the Web."
She explains: "It's good in the way that I can know what's going on at any moment and I can easily get in touch with clients. But on the flip side, there's no downtime. You're always on - and always connected.
Today's technologies can also lead to less "face time," which may be bad for a salesperson who relies on building personal relationships with customers. "It's so easy to say, 'I'll send you an e-mail,' but it's important to keep those face-to-face meetings going in order to build that trust," Kivel says.
Webcasts are another labor-saving technology that enable people to be all over the country and "meet" without coming together.
"If we want to show them a prototype of an application or want to have PowerPoint slides running, we can," explains Kivel. "And you can schedule meetings at any time. But again, there's less face-time.
Along the same lines as a Webcast, Microsoft offers many conferences and training sessions on the Internet. Kivel says most of them are free since they are a powerful tool in building partner relationships.
"The more our partners know about their products, the better we can sell them. That's why they offer those for free and they take that expense on their end," she says.
December 8Pinnacle is an IT consulting firm specializing in application development. Its consultants build custom applications using Microsoft technologies. So whatever type of system a company needs built, Pinnacle would fill the spot with either a Microsoft product or would custom-build a system. Pinnacle also does architecture design (building architecture or infrastructure that the application would sit on).
Kivel says Pinnacle is doing a lot of newer technology solutions based on the relatively new Microsoft.net platform.
"It's a great new technology," she says. "We're doing a lot of new technology on the front end while a lot of companies are leaving their back-end systems intact and just accessing them and integrating with them. Companies are not building those big mainframe databases; they're just using the technology to access the information and present it in a new front end or a Web front end."
Pinnacle also is seeing an increase in applications being built for the Pocket PC and for tablets.
"Tablets are great for vendors and salespeople to go out and work with," Kivel explains. "It's a laptop that you can turn around and actually write on and fill out forms quickly. It has a dual purpose. They can write notes like on a pad, or they can fill out quick forms. When they get back to the office, it can connect to the backend database and be updated."
Wireless technologies remain all the rage. "You can pull your laptop into a conference room and work from anywhere," Kivel explains. "Most times I have a meeting in the office, I'll grab my laptop and type up my notes and at the same time I can be sending e-mails or files to the person across the table from me."
December 8Over the past decade technology has advanced in leaps and bounds for computers, but it's come even further for printers.
George Platt, president of New Haven's 103-year-old Harty Press, has seen dramatic changes in just the past five or six years.
Harty handles print advertising and direct mail for companies throughout the Northeast.
"The digital world has made everything more affordable. Everything's faster," Platt says.
"With digital tools, a lot more work is shifted to the creator because the digital desktop has allowed the designer to do a lot of the things that were before done in a proprietary manner in a print shop. These steps are now at the designer's fingertips. They'll do re-touching using PhotoShop," Platt says, "and the page layout programs are so powerful that they can do what used to take an offset stripper or a tradesperson who created effects with film, in a second, with a push of a button. What used to take four or six hours to do manually can now be done with a push of a button."
Platt says with the added capabilities on the designer's desk, ads come to his shop more print-ready.
"In printing, every five years there has been a major technological revolution, so every five years, a new technology comes on board," he says.
The most recent change was direct-to-plate or digital replacing film. The printing process has evolved from letter-press to offset film to desktop publishing in the early 1990s.
Harty Press invested in a new digital press in April.
"It has no plates, it just goes straight from the file to press, so that eliminates the plates," he explains. "It does color digital and you can make every copy different with variable photos, variable data, every printed piece can have your name on it, the next will have my name on it, it's easily customized and personalized."
"There are still some people who haven't gone to direct-to-plate printing, but film has more or less been rendered an old technology," Platt says.
In the printing industry, there seems to be just enough time to settle into one technology before something new comes along to replace it. Each change brings a new learning process - and, naturally, a new investment.
"The unfortunate part is you pass along the savings to your client because printing has become such a competitive industry," says Platt. "You don't bank the savings for too long, you wind up passing it right along."
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