Best Practices for Mobile Printing

The pace of business today demands speed, and mobile technologies make this possible.  Be it Smartphones or tablets, employees are using mobile devices to get their jobs done.  The ability to print from mobile devices speeds business decisions and transactions and lets employees be more productive.  So, the sooner businesses understand the options available for mobile printing and deploy them, the better.

Perhaps the easiest way to understand mobile printing options is to look at them from a “good, better, best” perspective.

Good mobile printing options

Vendor specific mobile printing apps.  These are free downloads provided by the specific copier/printer vendor.  For example, if you have Canon copiers/printers in your business, your employees with Smartphones or tablets can download Canon’s mobile printing app and be able to print to Canon machines.

The apps are deployed by the individual owner of mobile device.  The types of files the app will print vary by vendor, but most do a good job of printing photos.  The apps include only the security features provided by the vendor.

Better mobile printing options

Enterprise wide server-based solutions so involve the IT director of a business.  These are vendor neutral, and the IT director provides the appropriate app to their end users based on what type of device the end user has (i.e. iOS, Android, Blackberry OS).  This option allows any mobile device to print to any networked printer.

Capabilities allow the mobile devices to do direct to print, email to print, and release to print.  This option configures with corporate security system/s providing additional layers of security to printing over the vendor provided free download mobile printing apps.

Best mobile printing options

Also vendor neutral enterprise wide server-based solutions that are initiated via the IT director.  The IT director pushes down the appropriate app to end users based on the device they use and users can print to any multifunction device (MFD) on their network.  End users have a seamless interaction with the MFDs and are able to use all the MFD’s features without learning a new interface or having to re-authenticate.

Users are able to scan documents from MFDs to their mobile device and can do secure release printing (print a secure job from their mobile device and then print that job at any networked MDF by authenticating at that MFD).  With these “best” options there are no changes to the corporate security structure.

These solutions can incorporate departmental bill-back of mobile printed documents, can incorporate workflow for job routing, and multiple authentication methods can tie to a single account (i.e. one individual with multiple email accounts can be identified as one account).  The “best” options are scalable to any size organization.