In days gone by, the print dynamic was rigid and static: It required print users to shuttle back and forth between their desktop PCs and one or two nearby printers. It was a slow, limiting and binary system that tied office workers to their desks for most of the day.
But thanks to recent developments, manufacturers like Samsung are now helping office workers throw off their chains as printing enters a distinctly mobile era. Now workers can harness the full power of their printers – armed with just their mobile phones or tablets.
And with the game-changing Samsung Print Service plugin, mobile users have recently reached an impressive milestone: As of June this year, a total of 100 million pages have now been printed from smart devices equipped with the plugin.
Plugin Power
Samsung Print Service is an Android-based plugin that comes as standard on a range of mobile devices. All phones and tablets running Android’s 4.4 (KitKat) or above are also compatible with the plugin, which is downloadable from Google Playstore in the form of an app. Samsung Print Service allows smart device users to print from any printing device certified by the Mopria Alliance. Samsung Print Service eliminates the need to install additional software for each printer brand, fiddle about with drivers or even set up printer connections.
The plugin has undergone many improvements since its launch with the Mopria Print Library back in November last year. With full support for Android, Apple and Windows devices, in addition to cloud printing standards like Google Cloud Print, the plugin already had a lot of scope. But in January this year, Samsung’s plugin won full Mopria Print Library certification, allowing a whopping 500 million users around the world to access mobile printing.
The number of printing jobs performed by the Samsung Print Service plugin has since spiked, surpassing the 100 million page mark in June. Samsung says it has seen a 30 percent rise in mobile print jobs via the plugin in the March to June period – a sign that the mobile printing ball is now well and truly rolling.
Driving Employee Efficiency
Companies all over the world are now looking for ways to enable their employees to work remotely, to ditch their desktop confines and enjoy a new lease of workplace freedom.
One car servicing company with over 1,000 customers per day has put Samsung Print Service to work as part of its efforts to empower staff. The company planned to do away almost entirely with having to bring customers off the forecourt and into the office – and saw Samsung Print Service’s functionality as key to this drive.
The company deployed tablet devices powered by Samsung Print Service that allows staff to issue work orders and even let customers sign for services on tablet touchscreens. The necessary paperwork – including invoices and receipts – can then be printed off directly from whichever company printer is at hand.
With paperwork now taken care of in a fraction of the time, the days of asking customers to trundle off to back offices to sign documents are but a memory – and have been replaced by a new age of workplace efficiency.
Productivity enhanced with Mobility
Samsung Print Service does not just enable the printing of traditional A4-format office documents. Many companies around the world – including those in distribution sector – are now looking at other practical and forward-looking uses for this versatile tool.
Indeed, one courier company has decided to boost its employees’ productivity by incorporating mobile printing functionality at the heart of its logistics operations.
Traditionally, employees had to print address labels and barcodes from their workstations, and then walk over to printers to pick these up. With Samsung Print Service, however, they can print a range of adhesive labels directly from their phones.
The company says that being able to print directly from phones not only lets employees save precious time on the job – it also lets workers check details more thoroughly and even improves their accuracy.
Far-reaching Freedom
Once your staff members no longer need to remain rooted to their desks, your business can become a busy hive of productivity, with workers moving to and fro as they please, printing from any and all of your printers without having to log onto their PCs.
With over 35 million jobs already printed by more than 20 million Samsung Print Service plugin users, all sorts of companies are now discovering how liberating mobile printing truly is.
As Samsung continues to make behind-the-scenes improvements to the plugin, enterprises of all sizes can say goodbye to desktop drudgery – and hello to seamless, mobile-powered enterprise.