If you’ve been around the office technology industry as long as I have (since 1986), you won’t have any trouble remembering single-function devices that copied, printed, faxed, or scanned. Even then, manufacturers spent significant R&D dollars on improving their devices. Common enhancements included faster speeds, higher resolutions, expanded paper capacities, better paper handling, and improved reduction and enlargement. Then came the shift towards digital devices and multifunction printers (MFPs) with versatile capabilities, including copy, print, scan, and fax.
Fast forward to 2025, and manufacturers remain on a quest to build a better box. However, the game is changing, which means security enhancements, software that enables greater productivity or is designed for vertical-market applications, more intuitive user interfaces, and cloud connectivity.
According to Bob Burnett, director of B2B solutions deployment and planning, Brother USA, Brother’s go-to-market philosophy is it’s not just the box, it’s also the services, solutions, and programs. “This is very important to us because Brother doesn’t sell direct,” he said. “It’s also, what are we doing for the end customer? Because if we’re not filling a need or solving a pain point, what’s the point?”
This becomes even more important when the contact is the IT manager. “Print is low on their priority list,” observed Burnett. “They consider it a headache and want it off their plate.” This is where workflow and security become important. Right sizing a customer’s fleet is another aspect of the discussion. “Foundationally, you need a great product that meets the various needs of those business customers’ print volumes,” said Burnett. “In many cases, you only need an A4 machine. However, you still need robust security and document workflow feature sets.”
Software Rules
In the three decades since the introduction of the first digital device, software has emerged as a significant value add. “Software enables us to bring a whole new level of intelligence to the device itself, to the printer fleet, the data, and the day-to-day workflows of a business,” said Kerstin Woods, vice president of solutions and outbound marketing at Toshiba America Business Solutions. She advocates that dealers embrace software to grow revenue but, more importantly, to focus on specific workflows.
Woods recommends starting with the software directly related to the device before expanding into areas such as workflow automation. However, her advice comes with a caveat. “If you have sales teams comfortable with hardware sales, I wouldn’t jump to workflow discussions. I’d first go to what we call a device-adjacent software offering like output management,” she said. “It’s an easy entry point because it’s a natural part of the print hardware discussion and relevant to the clients you’re already speaking with. Then expand to areas like workflow automation, but start with specific use cases, or the conversation will be too broad and time consuming.”
Three Buckets
Woods identified three buckets where Toshiba adds value to its devices:
- Panel personalization and cloud-enabled services allow dealers to better manage, monitor, service, and support clients remotely.
- Expanding into output management solutions. “This is all about making it easier to print and manage printing,” explained Woods.
- Simplifying and automating the document workflow to increase productivity. “This is where we think about how the data comes off the printed page and how does that work in a customer’s environment,” said Woods.
Toshiba’s Elevate Sky platform is at the core of its cloud strategy and the current generation of devices. “This is all about connecting our print hardware to the cloud,” noted Woods. “Once you do that, the sky’s the limit. You have all this data that now is aggregated and can be acted upon.”
On the workflow side of the box, Toshiba offers software that understands the context of a document. “For example, with our Elevate Sky translate tool, we’re not just translating words, we’re adapting translations for the context of the document,” explained Woods. “This means that we take physical documents and capture, route, and process them in ways that we can understand way more than the bits and bytes on the page. We understand how things are going to be used in a business.”
Improved User Interfaces
What good are all these apps and additional features if a user can’t figure out how to access them? The overall customer experience is what manufacturers such as Toshiba and Konica Minolta are focused on, whether interacting from an app or desktop or the device itself, not just the panel experience. The goal is to make printing easy from wherever the user is and whatever device they are interfacing with. For example, Konica Minolta’s MFPs can mimic competitor interfaces for mixed fleet environments. “We work with software vendors to ensure a seamless user experience for secure print and clinical workflow,” said Chris Bilello, vice president, business solutions development, who acknowledged that the company’s devices have had that ability for the past 10 years.
Cloud and Workflow Integration
The ability to connect to public or private cloud services and scan to the cloud is a huge trend that’s shaping today’s MFPs. For example, scan-to-cloud integrations are built-in on Brother devices. “It’s not like you have to add anything to it, it’s just a matter of configuring it,” said Burnett.
Sharp has developed a series of cloud and email connectors that can link to Outlook or Gmail. “On the box side, the connector side, Dropbox, Box, Teams, SharePoint, all these online cloud repositories are in there,” said Vince Jannelli, associate vice president, software product management, Sharp Business USA. “The benefit for the user is single sign on where they are automatically linked to whatever account they want to use, or their email.”
Konica Minolta’s bizhub One i-Series MFPs exemplify how the latest devices are evolving to provide greater capabilities. They include proactive security management, which detects unauthorized password and authentication access early and provides advanced virus protection with clear notification and status reporting so users can decide how to process jobs.
“With the One i-Series, we decided to first and foremost promote the cloud-enabled MFP,” said Bilello. “It’s not just marketing, it really is a document distribution device that connects to the cloud and provides everything related to security.”
Konica Minolta’s Dispatcher Stratus is a cloud-based document processing platform automates workflows, optimizes business processes, reduces costs, and enhances productivity. It’s part of Konica Minolta’s Dispatcher Portfolio, which includes Dispatcher Phoenix and Dispatcher Paragon for enhancing print and scan infrastructure management through advanced workflow automation and print management capabilities. “Dispatcher Stratus is a true multi-tenant public cloud capture platform,” said Bilello. “It can be connected to our machines for scanning or taking in documents from other sources rather than just scanning them. It’s one of the things that we have bet big on.”
Security Features
According to Brother’s Burnett, more customers are asking about security, which Brother can custom-configure on the device for its customers. Its WorkForce models interface with IT managers’ consoles for monitoring their networks.
Then there’s Konica Minolta’s bizhub SECURE, a suite of security features designed to protect sensitive data on bizhub MFPs. It ensures that documents, device settings, and network communications remain secure, helping businesses comply with data protection regulations.
Two years ago, Konica Minolta launched its Shield Guard, a cloud-based security monitoring and management solution for its bizhub MFPs. It provides centralized oversight of device security settings, compliance tracking, and automated alerts to ensure MFPs remain protected against threats and vulnerabilities. Bilello described this as the only platform in the industry that provides a pure, multi-tenant cloud offering for managing and monitoring device security settings.
A recently released MFP with enhanced security features is Kyocera’s ECOSYS MA2600cwfx Series. It includes secure boot, RTIC (Run Time Integrity Check), and SIEM (Security Information and Event Management). These features protect printed and scanned data and help users identify potential security issues.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is poised to redefine the capabilities of the MFP, particularly by enhancing service through predictive maintenance. “The industry was already doing that with managed print services and monitoring devices and the analytics of being proactive about when the machine needs toner and when the machine needs service,” said Burnett. “That will continue to morph and grow and be even more efficient because of the machine’s reporting capabilities.”
AI provides applied analytics to Sharp devices. “This enables auto remediation of the device, which helps the customer and the service provider,” said Jannelli. “It helps the customer because when the machine detects that it’s going into an error state, it can self-remediate, reloading the BIOS or rebooting. It helps the service provider because the machine’s not down, so there wasn’t a service call.”
Better, You Bet!
Despite declining print volumes, building a better box remains a high priority for all MFP manufacturers, not just those interviewed for this article. Whether by making multifunction printers more secure, cloud-integrated, or workflow-optimized, they have evolved into smarter, more connected business tools.
