Experiences with print processes lead to unique mental models — or perspectives — about print. In other words, how each of us works with print shapes how we understand it. Most of our mental models about print are limited to tasks that we can perform with multifunction printers (MFPs) and similar printing devices.

By taking a step back and looking at the part that print plays in information workflows across your organization, you can disrupt this mental model and begin to see print as a business strategy rather than a collection of tasks. During a digital transformation, this is a more valuable perspective because it leads to a better understanding of how your employees move information today — providing insight into how you can make these processes more efficient.

Your investigation into print will also reveal how data is currently prioritized and what steps you need to take to help protect sensitive information. For example, you may find that employees currently scan and copy clients' personal information during compliance procedures, so that they have both digital and hard copies of the data. This may tell you that your regulatory compliance staff is concerned about the possibility of losing this information — signaling that you need to put disaster recovery protocols in place to protect digital forms of this data and look for ways to reduce paper consumption.

In another scenario, you might find that a lot of proprietary information and intellectual property is printed, copied, scanned and shared with clients by employees when they're away from the office. This tells you that this data must be high priority, but at the same time, it tells you that the paper copies of this information are highly vulnerable to security risks. These insights may lead you to a digital rights management solution that enables employees to keep this information out of the wrong hands by letting employees:

• Limit the number of times a user can open a document.
• Disable files that were accidentally or maliciously sent outside your organization.
• Track confidential information while it's in transit.

Another benefit of assessing print workflows from this new perspective is that it helps you gauge the digital transformation maturity level of your employees — so you can make the transition to a digital workplace easier on your team.

Evaluating how your employees currently use print not only helps you determine how they prefer to work, it's also an indicator of their level of engagement. For example, you might find that your consultants and sales reps use hard copies of documents to share information with clients even though creating Microsoft® PowerPoints, SlideShare presentations or other options are available. This could lead to the realization that these employees are not open to changes that will result in creating digital presentations. You could then conclude that their digital transformation maturity level is low and will necessitate more education and training, as well as additional efforts to increase engagement with new technologies.

On the other hand, you might find that some employees go out of their way to avoid making hard copies. Perhaps they use MFPs to scan document data onto the devices' hard drives, so they can email that information to themselves to make it easier to share. This is a valuable insight that tells you these employees are ready for a digital shift now — perhaps even frustrated that you haven't made the transition already. The knowledge that your employees will embrace change may lead you to the decision to push for a more accelerated digital transformation so that you can increase productivity, improve business processes, enhance customer relations and grow your business sooner rather than later.

Looking at how your employees print also tells you what manual processes can be eliminated to make their lives easier. In “Digitization, digitalization and digital transformation: the differences," i-SCOOP defines digitization as, “the automation of existing manual and paper-based processes, enabled by the digitization of information."² In other words, you can't automate manual processes without digitizing your information first. i-SCOOP even seems to be saying that digitization and automation are one and the same. So when you're assessing how employees engage with print processes, pay particular attention to the manual and paper processes they perform each day. This can help you determine what information to digitize first — setting you up to save employees time with automation at some point in the near or distant future.

Whether it ultimately leads to a new business model, a more efficient operational process, an improved online buying experience, a revolutionary product or a new service that helps you to reorient the competitive landscape — or all of the above — taking a serious look at your current print-related processes can help to set you on the right path in your digital transformation journey.