H&H Color Lab Case Study: Using Photo Applications to Drive Revenues and Create a "Buzz" with New Products
Challenge
Like other photographic labs serving professional photographers, H&H Color Lab has seen a shift in its customer base—from large studio storefronts to more and more single-person businesses. With that shift has come a marked decline in the number of transactions for each customer—as well as the dollar value for each of those transactions.
“The reality is that a customer today is worth half as much in sales as they were five years ago,” says David Drum, business development manager at H&H.
With professional studios buying fewer photographic prints, H&H realized it needed to offer new products and attract new customers if it wanted to continue to grow and thrive. The key, though, was to do so while staying true to the company’s core values of customer service and uncompromising quality.
Solution
H&H needed a way to accommodate short-run printing—such as to output one photo book or 24 greeting cards—using lots of variable data. “A digital press was the only way we’d get a press,”
says Drum.
But Drum and his colleagues had looked at digital presses in the past and felt that the quality they delivered for photo applications wouldn’t live up to the quality H&H had become known for. Then they looked at Xerox.
Joseph Dicks University of New Brunswick
In July 2007 the New Brunswick Department of Education commissioned a review of French second language programming in New Brunswick. The Minister of Education, Kelly Lamrock, appointed two commissioners, James Croll and Patricia Lee, neither of whom is an expert in the area of second language education.
On February 27, 2008 the Commissioners released their report. To the disbelief of informed readers, the report presented a totally one-sided view of Early French Immersion (EFI) programming in New Brunswick. The views of second language experts, and other key informants such as the Commissioner of Official Languages, who spoke about the benefits of EFI as well as the problems that need to be addressed, were not included in the report. Years of research on EFI demonstrating its effectiveness with regard to French proficiency and overall literacy were also ignored.
Subsequent analyses of the Croll-Lee report by professors from the Math and Statistics Department at UNB Fredericton, as well as other professors at UNB, Mount Allison, and Université de Moncton, clearly demonstrated that there were serious errors in the way statistical data were presented. Major conclusions about the relative value of late immersion over early immersion were based on analyses that were improperly reported.
Plasticard-ZFT Acquires Customer Identification Data With the Help of ABBYY FormReader
Plasticard-ZFT, the producer of personalised bank cards and customer cards, was confronted with an exciting challenge from a new customer. The company was assigned not only the responsibility of producing and personalising customer cards but also to digitally transfer the data in order to activate the related customer account. In order to avoid misuse, the identity of the person applying for the card had to be clearly verified.
The procedure on which both parties agreed upon requires the identification of the person through a POSTIDENT form. A form, filled out by the entitled person is forwarded to Plasticard-ZTF, where the data must be digitalised and compared to the account information in the database. If the data matches, the account will be activated.
Plasticard-ZFT needed software that could quickly, easily and reliably extract the needed data out of the forms and prepare them for processing. As the company had no experience in form processing it asked for advice from EDV-Partner GmbH, an integrator of individual T solutions located in Hamburg. In previous projects EDV-Partner GmbH worked with ABBYY technology and was very happy with the results. Therefore, a conjoint decision was made to use ABBYY FormReader Desktop Edition.
Toshiba Taps Webroot to Provide Web Security in the Cloud
The Problem
At the Toshiba branch in France, Jerome Jasmin, Director of the Information Department, and his staff of 12 were working hard to provide efficient Web protection to the branch’s 600 employees. They had two different solutions in place for Web security—a hardware appliance and a software product— but malware still seeped through. Moreover, 50 employees were using the latest generation of industry-leading Toshiba laptops to remotely connect to the network, and these mobile PCs were even less protected against web threats.
Using two different solutions cost extra time, money and resources and was eventually considered inefficient and ineffective. Toshiba headquarters required that Web security be improved and expanded to include inbound and outbound Web filtering for malware—so Jasmin began researching to find a better and more affordable solution.
“We were doing research on different products and we needed to find one specifically for Web filtering that would be affordable but still offer great security,” Jasmin says. “One of our technical specialists had heard good things about Webroot Web Security SaaS and we decided to try it out.”
FACSys® Case Study Aviva Canada
THE CHALLENGE
Manual fax machines, in multiple departmental and geographic locations did not provide the level of compliance required by legislation nor the timely delivery of inbound faxes and confirmations of transmitted faxes.
Owen Smith, Manager of Aviva Canada’s telephony group said “Our dependency on fax transmissions continues unabated. The insurance industry remains a very paper intensive business. Our business model requires that each of these transmissions be dealt with in a specific time period. Traditional fax methods simply could not meet our workflow, accountability and compliance requirements as well as ensuring delivery timelines.”
THE GOALS
- Workflow accountability
- Compliance
THE SOLUTION
FACSys® Fax Messaging Gateway
FACSys Fax Messaging Gateway is deployed throughout various business groups in multiple locations. Centrally deployed and managed, redundant servers provide 92 channels of fax capacity to 3 major business groups including call centre agents located in India. By using the FACSys server’s routing functions, each user’s fax is delivered to the correct in-box anywhere in Canada or India. Complete audit trail information ensures that accountability is maintained. Unique features such as Round Robin Routing provide workflow management for the inbound fax message stream to call centre agents. Costs are significantly reduced from previously hosted services and manual fax equipment.
FACSys® Case Study Nigel Stephens Counsel Portfolio Management
The Challenge
Ian Dalrymple, Managing Director of NSC, was an early adopter of LAN-based fax server technology starting with a four channel Gammalink CP4LSI fax card installed in a Novell server in 1993. Like many early adopters, Ian found having a fax server to be a highly efficient communication method with the clientele (considering that 11 years ago e-mail was not as ubiquitous as it is today). As NSC migrated to a Windows® platform in the late 90’s, Ian decided to completely eliminate photocopiers from his office! His intention was to have only scanners and printers and store all of the documentation electronically in folders in his Exchange Server, so they are centrally located, easily accessible and printed only when needed.
The Solution
FACSys® Fax Messaging Gateway
“FACSys became an integral part of our day-to-day workflow. The ability to transmit and receive fax documents electronically from the desktop and then store them securely for quick retrieval has not only streamlined our services to our clientele but has also given me, as Managing Director, a sense of security that no important confidential customer portfolio documents are left lying around the office”. “The use of PDF documents is increasing in our business. We create documents in Word, convert them to PDF for e-mailing and faxing. With Exchange and FACSys we are able to send a PDF by e-mail and/or fax directly from Outlook®, depending on the delivery method our client wants. We are pleased to see that the next version of FACSys will include the ability to receive inbound faxes in PDF format.”
Canon Aids Relief Activities Following Philippines Typhoon
Dec 27, 2011 Typhoon Washi, which swept through the southern Philippines in December, has caused extensive damage due to record-setting heavy rainfall and landslides across the region.
We at Canon extend our heartfelt condolences to all those affected by this disaster and our thoughts go out to the victims and their families.
Green Radio “NEC’s Approach Towards Energy-Efficient Radio Access Networks”
Executive Summary
As part of the international efforts for energy conservation and CO2 reduction, migration to an energy-efficient mobile infrastructure is of high importance to the mobile communications industry. For network operators, energy efficiency is much more than a corporate social responsibility topic — it will be one of the key factors for successful operation of large-scale mobile communication services.
In NEC’s Green Radio approach for next-generation mobile infrastructure solutions, energy-efficient operation is part of the overall design. The base station platform consists of energy-efficient key devices and enables operation without an air conditioner. It also provides intra- and inter-base station control mechanisms to adapt to changing demand for capacity at different locations and times in its resource usage, network coverage and energy consumption.
This whitepaper presents the benefits of the Green Radio approach and provides an overview of NEC’s development and standardization activities for ensuring a green future for mobile communications.
Operator Benefit
Due to the tremendous upswing of mobile Internet access demand, the cellular wireless system is currently transitioning to LTE. This next-generation mobile infrastructure provides broadband access and enables new classes of applications for mobile users.
Tshwane University of Technology
The Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) is the largest residential higher education institution in Southern Africa. With campuses located in Tshwane (Pretoria, Soshanguve and Ga-Rankuwa), Nelspruit, eMalahleni and Polokwane, TUT employs more than 2700 permanent staff members and serves approximately 60,000 students.
Challenges
Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) was formed in 2004 through the merger of three technikons, namely Technikon Northern Gauteng, Technikon North West and Technikon Pretoria. This resulted in a network comprising mostly of iS3000 systems. However, one Campus – Gauteng North – still deployed an Ericsson PBX system.
In 2007, the university decided to integrate all campuses into a single vendor, centralised and managed network to work towards a phased voice over IP (VOIP) migration, with a view to have a fully operational IP network by 2011. The phased approach would accommodate the university’s IP Telephony (IPT) strategy, and reduce administration and management time, resulting in reduced costs for the university.
Stephen Rakgoale, Deputy Director: Communications Infrastructure in ICT Services at TUT, says: “Our university is faculty based, which means the teaching staff are always moving between campuses. Users had to log support calls whenever they moved from one campus to another, which resulted in increased downtime and greater frustrations with staff.”
AnyDoc Software's 2011 Reseller Training Summit A Huge Success
TAMPA, FL — AnyDoc Software, a leading provider of automated document, data capture, and classification solutions, recently hosted their 2011 Reseller Training Summit in beautiful Clearwater Beach, FL. The Summit was a three-day learning extravaganza that armed AnyDoc’s channel partners’ sales and technical staff with the information and tools they need to solve customers’ most difficult document processing challenges and drive future sales.
Heavily attended, the Reseller Training Summit was a resounding success. AnyDoc’s impressive agenda included dynamic and interactive sales and technical tracks to educate channel partners about the latest product and solution advancements, selling techniques, software demos, technical guidelines, and much more. Especially noteworthy were the hands-on workshops where participants replicated steps on their laptops as guided by the instructor. These informative and exciting sessions were a huge hit with resellers.
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