COMPANY PROFILE
2013
Bytes Document Solutions A wealth of solutions‌
CompANY PROFILE
A wealth of solutions… Editorial: Tim Hands Production: Chris Bolderstone
Since its original beginnings in 1964, Bytes Document Solutions, a branch of the much larger Bytes Technology Group operating throughout South Africa and abroad, has worked tirelessly to offer the very best in document services. Adaptable to all needs and budgets, its provisions are backed by an unfaltering commitment to environmental concerns, ensuring a sustainable future across its areas of operations.
Established in 1964 under its original name of Rank Xerox, the company that has since come to be known across Sub-Sarahan Africa as Bytes Document Solutions has spent the 50 years since its creation building up a customer base well in excess of 10,000, providing innovative and diverse product and service offerings supported by 80 service centres across the continent. The company finds itself responsible at present for the employment of over 1350 staff, all of whom work to allow Bytes to achieve its central philosophy; “helping our customers do great work.” A leading document management and technology solutions provider, it is equipped now to deliver expert services across its three main divisions, Xerox, LaserCom and NOR Paper, all while embodying its work ethos to live the values of
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innovation underpinned by high quality output and service excellence. The Xerox branch of Bytes Document Solutions’ operations sees the company offering the essential back-office support that allows clients to focus on any business at hand, across 26 sub-Saharan countries. It is the authorised distributor of Xerox office products and document management solutions throughout these countries, and provides the complete range of services for every individual budget and need. Its range of Xerox office products includes advanced and flexible technologies adaptable to any company, with its provisions of multi-function printers, copiers, supplies and consumables. What helps to set Bytes yet further apart is that the entirety of its products is specially formulated and tested to provide the highest image quality, longer printer
Bytes Document Solutions
life, lower maintenance costs and a higher print output. While Bytes can offer the set-ups to allow businesses and individuals to perform these tasks themselves, its product solutions mean large enterprises are provided with customised high-volume, high-speed solutions, which aim to increase production speed while reducing costs. These peerless solutions are provided by industry experts who understand the challenges faced in such competitive industries, and know how to apply document outsourcing services to achieve measurable results. It is the breadth of experience that Bytes has with companies across many sectors, including the energy sector, financial sector, government, higher education, high-tech and communications, retail and the manufacturing industry, that helps it stand out from the crowd – to be able to offer solutions in such a broad range of business is something rarely found on such a large scale.
As the leader in document management solutions, Bytes Document Solutions has offered managed print services to a broad range of clients for over 15 years. Its Lean Six Sigma methodology combines with a unique approach to deliver the best in document management solutions to customers across its area of operations. These customers benefit from measurable improvements, as a result of reducing waste and increasing effectiveness in vital business processes. The benefits of Bytes Document Solutions’ managed print services are varied and numerous, with a greater visibility of document management and printing costs allowing a much higher level of budget and resource management throughout the process. Such a well-executed, managed print service has been proven to reduce costs by up to 30%, while Bytes’ by now characteristic technical support and strategic
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CompANY PROFILE
advice ensure optimal output devices, as well as ongoing support to ensure that adaptation to these new streamlined work processes is as smooth and issue-free as possible. Bytes’ software solutions are a further important strand of its Xerox services, helping businesses deal with the ever-growing wealth of information and documentation they encounter every day. In this way, Bytes specialises in three key services, all rapidly and effortlessly deployed and offering solutions across multiple platforms. Perhaps most notable of these is its Web 2 Print solution, specifically developed for the South African market that provides a comprehensive set of tools to create, submit and manage print jobs online. Crucially, it also allows commercial printers and in-house print facilities to harness the benefits of the web within their own print environment. With the power to generate more than 40 million customer messages a month on behalf of corporate South Africa, Lasercom assists companies to communicate more effectively with their customers, both in terms of
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reducing cost and, as is by now characteristic for Bytes, with maximum long-term measurable result. It is equipped to handle all sorts of communication, both through its extensive fulfilment services and its value added services which include document finishing, plastic card personalisation and document composition and design. The former services, its fulfilment options, encompass an even wider set of capabilities, whether through its combination of optical mark recognition technology (OMR) and fully automated mailing machines that allows it to deliver the very best in all aspects of mailing, or the variable data printing geared towards business-critical, highly personalised documents. Lasercom has become a leader in personalised business communication solutions, while NOR Paper is branded as a one-stop shop for all printing and allied trades, stationers and small businesses, and boasts a similarly extensive range of services and products as its two sister operators. As one of South Africa’s largest paper merchants, its extensive and competitively priced range of paper products form an integral part of the high quality,
Bytes personalised service whose paper, packaging solutions and specialised media are tailored to the needs of each individual company it serves. This year saw the celebration of a particularly momentous landmark for Bytes Document Solutions, with the 75th anniversary of the first ever xerographic image, created by Chester Carlson in a rented secondstorey room in Queens, New York. Little could Carlson have imagined that this process would still, even in today’s world of ceaseless innovation, be at the heart of the majority of processes occurring in offices and businesses around the world, and without which work would be rendered nigh-on impossible. Its range of uses is broader than one could ever imagine – starting life as an invention whose intention was, according to its founder, to “make office workers a little more productive and office work a little simpler and less tedious,” its influence can be seen in transportation, education, and even healthcare, where the benefits of its use are experienced on a daily basis. A ceaselessly developing product, the company’s team of engineers, scientists and researchers are continuing to come up with
solutions to make work a simpler task, ensuring that the future will see a way of life even more convenient and easy to manage than what has already been achieved from the humble foundations of this process. Bytes Document Solutions occupies just one place within the much larger Bytes Technology Group, a leading group of ICT companies which possesses a multitude of products, technical skills and specialised services that support enterprise-wide IT infrastructure and telecommunications in a wide range of industries. Although just one element of this influential group in South Africa and further afield, it is a vital player among the nine companies under Bytes Technology Group’s charge, and as such Bytes Document Solutions recognises its role in ensuring environmental sustainability in all that it does. It has a refreshing viewpoint on this, and one that is becoming increasingly important as the sheer amount of work it undertakes grows year upon year. Rather than adopting what would in fact be an understandable point of view given the weight of responsibility on such a large company’s shoulders, and seeing this sustainability
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CompANY PROFILE as a burden and additional cost to its business, it in fact embraces the commitment to practising responsible corporate citizenship in this area. Again pioneering in its approach to business, Bytes Document Solutions was the first company in the industry to launch re-manufacturing initiatives, and builds on this work by continuing to lead the way in creating waste-free products. A reduction in energy use is one key way in which the group strives to protect the climate, backing this up with its commitment to eliminating the use of toxic materials and heavy metals from its product supply chain. Perhaps most important, given the nature of its most frequently undertaken work, is Bytes’ dedication to preserving biodiversity and the world’s forests. Paper is sourced initially from companies who meet stringent requirements that cover all aspects of papermaking, from forest management to production of finished goods. Customers are then, through such innovative techniques as reliable duplex printing, allowed to make the fullest use of the products, while software products such as DocuShare, SMARTsend, and FreeFlow Digital Workflow Collection help Xerox customers reduce paper consumption via its comprehensive digital management. Xerox is also in the second year of a three-year, $1 million grant to The Nature Conservancy, a partnership which is focused on forest management in Brazil, Canada,
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Indonesia, and the U.S. This scheme promotes best practices that enable environmental scientists, forest managers, and paper suppliers to work toward forest management, and ensure a viable, sustainable future for the vital work it undertakes.
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“Lasercom has become a leader in personalised business communication solutions, while NOR Paper is branded as a one-stop shop for all printing and allied trades, stationers and small businesses, and boasts a similarly extensive range of services and products as its two sister operators”
Bytes
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