Konica Minolta Business Solutions is the proud winner of a Buyers Lab (BLI) PaceSetter award 2020-2021 in Ease of Use: Enterprise Devices. It has received this distinction from Keypoint Intelligence, the world’s leading independent evaluator of document imaging software, hardware and services. Keypoint Intelligence based its selection on comprehensive testing and research, determining which OEM has incorporated the highest degree of end-to-end ease of use in the design of their enterprise devices.
Today, organisations need to provide their employees, from different departments, with hardware and printing infrastructure for a wide variety of applications. With this broad scope of functionalities, ease of use has become one of the most important features in modern multifunctional peripherals (MFPs). Konica Minolta is pursuing an uncompromising customer-centric approach: When developing a new MFP device, understanding use patterns, behaviours and user requirements is the cornerstone of its process. Konica Minolta’s close contact to its customers and additional research amongst dealers and other stakeholders enables it to create solutions perfectly suited for enterprise environments.
Konica Minolta drives usability-enhancing innovations
To determine who leads the market, Keypoint Intelligence carried out a study on functionality in every-day usage situations in enterprise work scenarios. With the award, Keypoint Intelligence recognises the importance of this factor in Konica Minolta’s product design and development. Researching what customers do with their devices and which functions are needed the most, Konica Minolta created a unique, large control panel that is fully tiltable.
This screen provides easy access to all basic settings and touch navigation for a pleasant and effective user experience. Keypoint Intelligence further states: “Konica Minolta is very strong when it comes to typical print, scan and copy functions, what really separates these next-generation products from the competition are the apps onboard tools, and innovations (…).” Konica Minolta’s MarketPlace comes preinstalled on all new devices. It allows its customers to access cloud offerings such as Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Google Mail, OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online. They can be easily downloaded at the control panel. Also, directly on the device, the Assistant app allows users to quickly connect their smartphones to online video instructions. In this way the users can conveniently check tutorials of how to perform a task on their smartphone while operating the MFP. One of the most striking functionalities, however, is Konica Minolta’s Personalize Follow-You Persona, which enables customisation of the MFP panel with all tools and apps a specific user most frequently needs. This way, users can work even more efficiently from any device, anywhere.
“We are especially proud to receive this award, as it shows that we are on the right track in the way we develop and deliver new solutions. We put the customers and the users with their needs and routines in the centre. Then we design solutions to intuitively fit around these needs: Because in the end, technology should adapt to the users and not the users to technology.”
Florian Loske, Manager Office Product Management, Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe