Konica Minolta is one of the world’s largest suppliers of printing and copying machines, but has long since realized that the existing business model is challenged.
Article by Flemming Østergaard in Berlingske on 18/11 2021
There is generally a strong focus on digitizing workflows in companies, and the forced repatriations during the Corona crisis have also shown that flexible working from home is both popular with employees and efficient for companies.
“Together with an increased focus on the green transition, this places further demands on digitalization. In light of these strategic challenges, Konica Minolta has entered the field as a relevant and qualified partner to help with the green transition and digitalization. This was the main reason why Nextagenda became part of the Japanese giant in 2019,” says Mads Rørdam, CEO of Nextagenda and continues: “We do this by offering a solution that can digitize business processes based on print data and/or the many documents and files that are located in companies’ archives both physically and digitally”.
Context recognition of documents for efficient digitization
The Danish company was immediately tasked with creating an algorithm that could not only analyze the content of documents and files, but also contextually recognize digital content on emails, files, scanned documents, archives, etc. in customers’ IT environments.
“Together with Konica Minolta, we have developed a solution that can identify and understand digital content. With this knowledge, we can now automatically fill in and process digital documents and/or case management processes so that everything is done automatically and without having to print or type in many different IT systems in a case management process.
If data exists somewhere, the solution will find it and “enter” it into the relevant context. In this way, a process that previously required accessing multiple IT systems, emails, documents, etc. and searching for information can now be fully automated or only approved by the case manager.”
Konica Minolta’s solution is aimed at companies and organizations that are lagging behind in the digitization process. And also those who have a strong focus on digitization and have implemented e.g. case management systems, professional systems, archives, etc. but still lack a close connection to the IT platform, including email.”Case management systems in particular present challenges in the form of having to print documents and emails in order to compile content and carry out further case management. For this, we have created a solution setup that can recognize the content of the documents and emails, extract relevant data and finally put it into a process context, so that the overall workflow is digitized and you get rid of the trivial work and increase both quality and job satisfaction,” says Mads Rørdam.
Document Intelligence and Smart Workflow Services
The solution is actually applied in two ways. The first is Document Intelligence – identifying and capturing all documents so they can be digitally contextualized and automate the document flow.
The second solution area, Smart Workflow Services (SWS), aims to digitize everything that is printed.
An algorithm in Konica Minolta’s SWS model analyzes what is sent to the printer and provides a segmented view of content and document types. SWS was developed based on the thesis that every time you print something, it is a manual work process. And if a company can get an overview of what they’re printing, they can also get an informed insight into where their digitalization journey can be given a further boost.
“If you get a good overview of what you print a lot of – for example, sales documents in a sales department, local plans in a municipality, CVs and LinkedIn profiles in the HR department – you can assess the potential for digitizing those work processes. Those in the hurricane of manual work processes often have a keen eye for the potential of digitalization, but find it difficult to document and communicate it. That’s exactly what SWS does: provides an overview of what’s being printed.”
In fact, the digitization process that Konica Minolta offers companies is actually sawing off an important leg of Konica Minolta’s own business model – the printing part.
“This strategic initiative to reinvent Konica Minolta is essentially doing away with print. It’s quite visionary that a print and copy company aims to do away with print. But if you don’t want to end up in the same place as many others who haven’t joined the fight for disruption, you have to be at the forefront of this,” says Mads Rørdam.
Denmark is known to be one of the most digital countries in the world, and therefore the Danish part of Konica Minolta plays an important role in the development of new solutions. A special task force has been established in Denmark to expand Konica Minolta’s new business model, initially to Northern Europe and then to the rest of Europe. But the solutions that work for Danish companies don’t necessarily work for German, French or Italian companies.
“We at Konica Minolta are humbled by the fact that countries are very different when it comes to the level of digital development. There is no one-size-fits-all. Therefore, we need to find out how we can best support the local Konica Minolta organizations in their development towards being able to offer these services,” says Mads Rørdam.
FACTS
Konica Minolta is a global IT company that is changing and revolutionizing the future of work. It bridges the gap between paper and digitalization by providing innovative quality solutions in print and IT infrastructure and is constantly developing its business areas. Konica Minolta provides solutions within:
– IT services
– Intelligent Camera Surveillance
– Print, scan and copy
– Document management and workflow
– Business processes
– Production and industrial printing
– Modern data warehousing
– Business Intelligence
– Advanced Analytics
