We are often asked how Officeware and Konica Minolta address the needs of the legal industry. This is a great question. Law firms, like so many professional organizations today, are looking for partners to help them leverage technology and solutions to address costs and improve efficiencies. Officeware and Konica Minolta Business Solutions have been able to deliver a winning combination of hardware, software, and services that address many of the legal industry’s pain points. We have done this by solving real business problems, improving processes and creating opportunities for our clients to be more profitable.
Documents and content are the heart of information intensive industries like legal, whether we are talking about general litigation or the legal departments within a corporation. The requirement for technology to manage documents and content extends into the entire organization and effects corporate compliance, contracts, and any documents that have legal binding language. Add to these needs the issues and expense regarding compliance, security, production level copying, printing, scanning and cost recovery and we can certainly understand the challenge!
In the legal industry there are several solutions to assist organizations with their compliance needs, whether they are for legal regulatory purposes, trade standards, or corporate governance. To insure we are selecting the correct technology, the following questions should be asked:
Does the solution address privacy of confidential information?- Can the solution conform to the highest levels of security to protect confidential information?
- Does the vendor adhere to trade standards that meet our company’s compliance initiatives?
Redaction policies to keep confidential information in a document can be automated and easily administered through solutions. Konica Minolta’s Unity software or Nuance’s PDF Pro provide legal organizations easy to adapt redaction tools that provide the privacy and confidentiality needed for the legal industry.
Security options, such as authentication and digital rights management, help keep sensitive documents and information in the right hands to maintain compliancy. Konica Minolta security solutions range from authentication solutions, hard drive encryption, and removal to IP security for data leaks. While other providers provide these as options, most of these features are built standard into the entire Konica Minolta MFP line. As a matter of fact, the full line of Konica Minolta bizhub models has achieved the ISO 15048 EAL 3 certification.
Trade Standards are in place to insure that as organizations search for vendors they have a set criterion to help distinguish between potential partners. Many organizations require their partners meet those standards before engaging them. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) governs these standards. Konica Minolta meets the standards for security (ISO 15408) and environmental (ISO 14001).
Legal organizations challenged with the management of high volume reproduction of documents will find the Konica Minolta line well suited to their needs. The Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 1051, bizhub PRO 950, bizhub PRO 1200, bizhub C5501, and bizhub PRO 6501 are ideally suited and up for the challenge of high volume environments. Whether your documents need to be tracked, annotated, edited and oftentimes created in electronic and hardcopy formats, the entire KM production line will work in tandem with the leading industry software solutions such as IPRO Tech’s IPRO COPY +, Lexis Nexis LAW 5.0 PreDiscovery and LAWtsi and Ribstone Systems to bring optimum efficiency and cost effectiveness.
Cost recovery enables organizations to bill back their clients for copies, prints and other legal costs such as phone calls and administrative tasks. Konica Minolta devices offer a highly sophisticated and intelligent interface on bizhub OP models, called the “Vendor Port” that interacts with leading recovery solutions such as Equitrac and Copitrack, to enable firms to harness these expenditures and bill back easily and accurately. For smaller firms just starting out in tracking simple copy, print, and scanning jobs Konica Minolta offers their PageScope Enterprise suite at a fraction of the cost.
Improving business processes and improving profitability underlies the need for Konica Minolta’s Optimized Print Services (OPS). This is not just an assessment – it is an overall optimization to help drive costs down, while working in an ongoing manner to continuously improve those costs and streamline workflows throughout the organization. Some questions to consider when determining if an assessment or audit is necessary:
- Do you understand your print, copy, scanning and administrative costs for your entire fleet?
- Does the equipment mix meet the needs and cost structure of your firm?
- Do you think there are areas that can be optimized to streamline your flow of documents?
If it is determined that your firm is a fit for Konica Minolta’s Optimized Print Services some of the benefits you will experience will be:
- Fully managed and controlled output environment
- Process to conserve resources and minimize ongoing maintenance costs
- Streamlined business processes as it relates to content and document management
In summary, Officeware and Konica Minolta are uniquely positioned to help the legal industry. With the combination of its hardware, internally developed software, partner solutions, and professional services organization, Officeware and Konica Minolta are able to address the legal market with a variety of solutions that can meet virtually any size legal firm or corporate legal entity.
Increasingly, more organizations are considering the environmental impact when purchasing products and services. This commitment to sustainability is important to being a good corporate citizen and also makes business sense by reducing overall expenses. Thinking ‘green’ has also extended to the decision making process of procuring copiers, printers and other office document equipment.
Both companies have earned Energy Star ratings for their products Energy Star is a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy, which identifies energy-efficient products that meet strict government standards. Energy Star multi-functional devices and printers not only use less energy when operating, but also utilize a low power mode when not in use for further energy reduction. 
For more information on Konica Minolta’s environmental programs, 
For more information on HP’s environmental programs, 
Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. (
The Brand Keys methodology, which considered several competitors, asked customers to characterize their perfect product in the MFP Office Copier category, setting the standard for excellence. The 2012 Brand Keys research once again identified Konica Minolta as a leading brand for customer loyalty in the “MFP Office Copier” category when measured against the “Ideal” office copier.
OfficeWare - a Konica Minolta company was recently ranked #1 by 
For professional service companies such as advertising agencies, law firms and engineering consultants that provide services to multiple clients, allocating variable expenses to specific clients is essential to remain competitive. While the majority of professional service companies track their associates’ time to a specific client for billing purposes, a majority don’t account for associated costs.
January 17, 2012 – Hackensack (NJ) – For the second consecutive year, Konica Minolta Business Solutions, U.S.A., Inc. has won Buyers Laboratory LLC’s (BLI’s) most coveted award—A3 MFP Line of the Year. Once each year, Buyers Lab, the leading global provider of information and testing services to the digital imaging industry, acknowledges the vendors whose product lines are determined to be the best overall in their 
respective categories based on the cumulative results of models tested in BLI’s rigorous two-month laboratory evaluation. By assessing reliability, image quality, ease of use, productivity and a range of other criteria, the tests reveal the products that deliver customers the best value and most trouble-free performance. Also considered are the breadth of the vendor’s line and the vendor’s ability to provide quality products suitable to a broad spectrum of customer needs, from low-volume to high-volume.
document imaging hardware and software, today announced that Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc., is the recipient of BLI’s “2012 Document Imaging Solutions Line of the Year” award. BLI editors selected Konica Minolta for this first-ever award based on the company’s exceptional solutions portfolio across the range of document imaging software categories BLI covers on its Solutions Center subscription service.
Security is obviously a part of how we work. This begins as soon as we walk into the office every morning, probably passing through a level of security.
Konica Minolta is even working on a new technology, the Body Area Network (BAN) Smart Card, which will utilize a sensor and a smart card to provide access to doors, buildings, computers and multifunctional devices without any “hands on” action. This technology will soon be available.
Well before the CBS story aired, more knowledgeable customers were asking Konica Minolta for documentation on how to lockdown their hard drives, and Konica Minolta had full disclosure, step-by -step documentation on how to do it. However, most people didn’t think their copier or MFP was at risk at the time. Now they’re starting to get it, he says.
To learn more about Konica Minolta’s bizhub Secure visit: 
Local 7′s Stefanie Martinez sits down with Jon Cross from Officeware to talk about 20 Days of Christmas, a program that donates 20 Konica Minolta ReNeW black and white copiers to local non-profit groups. 