Analysing and modifying the way documents flow through your business are great ways to drive higher productivity on an ongoing basis while reducing overheads.

The following six types of analytics will provide the insight you need:

1) Device analytics

It’s important to get a handle on the environmental and financial impact of your printer fleet.

By gathering data from the devices themselves, device analytics provides details on underutilisation and areas in which the business is spending too heavily on consumables.

With that information in hand, you can:

• ensure you have neither too many nor too few devices per employee;
• spread device utilisation evenly throughout the organisation; and
• place printers in locations that are most convenient for staff.

2) User analytics

How are your employees using their print environment?

With user analytics, you’ll gain insight into document workflows, successfully drive sustainability initiatives, provide more relevant staff training and reduce the TCO of your printing fleet.

By identifying employee activity that’s inefficient or paper-heavy, your business can:

• prioritise the digitisation of the most expensive and wasteful manual tasks;
• eliminate wasteful printing entirely;
• more easily apportion costs to different parts of the company; and
• identify areas in which you can be more environmentally friendly.

3) Service analytics

With the right MPS provider, you’ll be shown how the individual devices in your printer fleet are either printing too much or causing problems you may not be aware of.

Xenith’s Service analytics provides details such as machine operability, total print volume, up-time and the type of print-related issues most commonly reported. Most importantly, it means we can better serve you with increased visibility of your network and by providing real-time data in meetings.

4) Document analytics

Why do your employees press the ‘print’ button?

This is one of the many questions asked by document analytics, which helps businesses identify processes that are too convoluted (a sure sign of an inefficient workflow).

Document analytics also looks at the ‘fate’ of each document; does it end up being consigned to the shredder or is it stored somewhere?

The journeys taken by your documents are fascinating, and offer a real eye-opener when it comes to assessing the TCO of your printer fleet.

5. Workflow analytics

Knowing where documents are kept and what printing devices are used isn’t enough; workflow analytics provides a data-driven view of every document-based process you currently rely on.

Use workflow analytics, and your business can:

• gain insight into its document usage;
• find behavioural patterns within the organisation that may be inefficient;
• find out who prints what and where;
• discover opportunities, anomalies and risks with the way you file and store documents; and
• clarify why documents are printed and how they’re shared.

6) Process intelligence

This is all about monitoring, analysing and optimising the operational processes within your organisation.

In the digital age, information is usually dispersed across your business website and its internal systems and databases. This makes it difficult to find out which processes are working well and which are at fault.

With process intelligence, you can gain access to meaningful data that reveals how your customers and employees engage with your business processes. These real-time analytics and access to information as and when you need it means you can finally see how their interactions are impacting your bottom line.

These six analytics for document workflow management will help you lift a lid on what might be one of the most costly elements of your business.