How Apps Help Remote Workers Manage Documents

For years we’ve been in a constant evolution of the office landscape and how people work – with more and more businesses slowly navigating away from the traditional office space. However, 2020 and the global pandemic has escalated change and forced a new normal on businesses across all industries. Remote working, virtual offices, and mobile employees are no longer the few but rather the majority.

And while remote working offers many benefits such as workplace flexibility, better work-life balance, and positive impacts on the environment with less commuting, there are still challenges to overcome such as productive collaboration between employees and handling of documents. How do remote workers bridge the gap between their virtual workplaces and the physical office to safely and consistently manage business documents?

Think about it. Account applications, signed contracts, project quotes, claims forms, receipts, payments – any number of documents still need to be handled and processed from somewhere beyond the physical office.

How do you get these pieces of your business into your digital workflow? And how do you pull documents out of the cloud or other repository to use on location with a client or a service? Can you manage mobile documents safely, reliably, and affordably?

The answer – app! Josh Justice, president of app solutions provider JustTech, says, ““We have a lot more mobile workers and people doing work at home. Having access to repositories they use on a regular basis only makes their work easier and more efficient with apps.”

So, what kind of apps can help remote workers manage documents?

“As a solutions provider, the issues we see with mobile workers are the ability to print in different offices or other environments, and to easily scan with their workflows in different environments, as well,” Josh explains. One very cool mobile print app is the Print@PrintByXerox, where you don’t have to be on the network to use it and no IT assistance or intervention is required. If you can email, you can print remotely – it’s that simple! Users simply open their mobile phone or tablet, then send an email to Print@PrintByXerox.com with documents they wish to print. They’re immediately emailed back a passcode. They open the app on any multifunction printer, type in that code, and the documents are immediately printed out.

While mobile printing has made strides as a tool, it’s not seen as much progress as policy. “80% of our customers are looking for mobile print solutions, but only about 10 or 15% really have any kind of mobile printing policy in place,” observes Justice. A mobile printing policy is essential for safe, reliable, affordable document management.

For companies trying to navigate extending their office print policies to their remote employees working out of their home offices, Xerox Home Print Tracker (which comes with the Xerox Workplace Cloud solution) is a fantastic resource that is secure, controlled, affordable, and easy to set-up. Anytime someone clicks ’Print’ on any brand of printer, whether it’s personally owned or company supplied, job details are recorded in the cloud, giving visibility of business-related printing ready for analysis. It’s user-installable and no printer registration is required!

Scanning pairs well with mobile printing to cover the bi-directional document management needs of remote workers. Printing pulls information out of the digital realm and delivers it to employees, while scanning workflow provides the remote on-ramp to the digital workplace where business happens.

With the Mobile Link App, your mobile phone or tablet controls the workflow for your documents and creates a flexible and seamless connection between mobile devices and multifunction printers (MFPs). This app can scan, email, fax and print from your phone or tablet by connecting with a Xerox MFP. It is also able to send data to cloud storage.

Some workflow examples are:

• Receive scanned data from a Xerox MFPs direct to a phone, tablet or email.
• Scan photos and then upload to a personal or team loud storage service. Combine multiple scan files into a single PDF file.
• Send documents to multiple destinations in one-touchworkflows. Scan to multiple destinations simultaneously – such as email, Google Drive, Microsoft 365, Dropbox, and more – in one touch.

Apps like these take the advantages of our phones and our personal devices and bring that level of personalization to workflows integrated with multifunction printers, our “workplace assistants.” With this functionality at our fingertips, we can embrace the new normal and empower remote workers to stay productive!