How to Choose Cloud Printing Management Technology for Your Coworking Space (Tips from ezeep CEO)

Coworking spaces fully replace offices for lots of freelancers, entrepreneurs, and even companies. First of all, they come to your workplace to immerse in a special atmosphere of innovation, collaboration, and support. However, basic office supplies are also extremely important.

Cutting edge technologies and devices are something that we don't talk about as they must be available at your coworking center by default. For instance, every modern workspace must offer printing solutions for members. But are you sure that you provide the best and the most convenient printing services? I suggest you read this interview with Christoph Hammer, President & CEO at ezeep, Inc. before answering it.

ezeep is an advanced solution that lets you cloud manage your printers and printing to save time and money.

The technology allows moving the entire printing process to the cloud so that you no longer have to worry about drivers, operating systems and end devices while members just print. But that's not all, things become even easier if you are using andcards as your coworking software. Thanks to the integration with ezeep leading print management software, you can synchronize andcards member accounts to ezeep cloud printing solution.

This sync enables you to:

• Automatically and instantly connect printers to the devices of your staff, members and guests.
• Set up printing rules, limits and even prices for users, groups, printers.
• Get printing reports and dashboards and more.

Are you interested in establishing central print management at your coworking space? Read on and know more about possibilities with ezeep cloud printing technology.

 

Question#1

Helga: How did you come up with an idea of creating ezeep?

Christoph: We were providing cloud printing as a service to individuals free of charge since 2013. The feedback we received was positive when it came to printing but options to share printing with others while staying in control with policies and reports were missing. That’s why when we were presented with the opportunity to acquire the ezeep technology about 5 years ago we jumped on it. Since then we updated, improved and added quite a bit and the growth of the platform since then has been remarkable.

 

Question#2

Helga: What is the story behind the brand name?

Christoph: ezeep stands for “easy printing” and we make every decision about the product based on those words.

 

Question#3

Helga: What was the situation on the market when you decided to start your business?

Christoph: The situation now is just like when we started ⁠— printing is surprisingly difficult! All of our products aim to make it easier to print, as well as manage user access to printing.

 

Question#4

Helga: What were the main challenges on your way to success?

Christoph: As in any new venture, market awareness can be difficult. We have a busy trade show schedule that allows to meet and learn about the needs of coworking operators. Working with software partners like andcards is also vital to finding business.

 

Question#5

Helga: What marketing strategies did you apply to breakthrough?

Christoph: We are utilizing a mix of social media, event marketing and have a strong SEO focus for our website.

What sets us apart from others is our focus on integration partners. Membership in our Cloud Printing Alliance almost doubled this year. This means we are able to provide joint solutions to more customers than ever before.

 

Question#6

Helga: What innovative technologies did you bring to the market?

Christoph: Making printing easy for users and making it easy to manage for operators has been our biggest accomplishment.

 

Question#7

Helga: Do you have coworking spaces among your current customers? What are the most prominent ones?

Christoph: Most of our customers for ezeep are in the coworking/shared workplaces market, which are being used in over 58 countries. Other markets are education and corporations.

 

Question#8

Helga: What any coworking space owners should take into account when they fit the space with printers?

Christoph: One of the key benefits of using ezeep is that it is compatible with any printer that has a Windows driver, which basically means all of them! Owners have almost unlimited choice, which makes it all the harder.

Some key things to consider:

• Typically, only one-third of your members will print in a given month and jobs average only 6 pages. In this environment, faster time-to-print is much more important than prints-per-minute.
• It is difficult to predict the features you will need, so start small with a good workgroup laser printer. They can be purchased for a few hundred dollars.
• Don’t waste money on fancy features that will rarely be used (and potentially add to your support workload!) If your clients need advanced features, suggest a local print shop to help.
• As your business grows, add more printers. It can be better to have multiple smaller devices spread around the space, than one big one in the mailroom.
• Price your prints competitively, with a small premium for the convenience. Check the prices of your local competition.
• Use good paper! This is a great way to reduce paper jams, support calls and frustrated members. 24 Lb / 90 gsm or higher will produce good looking output that can be printed on both sides.
• Put a recycling bin in your facility. More than 50% of paper products are based on recycled material. It is a simple, proven way to do something for the environment.

 

Question#9

Helga: How any coworking space can save the costs on printer deployment with Ezeep?

Christoph: One of the biggest cost savings when using ezeep is staff and IT support time. With ezeep, users can easily self-install drivers and print without much support. We enable printing from Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android, Chromebook and using a web browser.

In each case, any available printers are automatically displayed without user intervention. When you add a new printer, your members will not have to do or update anything to print. If you take a printer offline, it is automatically removed from their apps.

 

Question#10

Helga: What are your plans for the future in terms of expanding your business?

Christoph: ezeep is continually upgrading our platform to keep up with the ever-changing landscape. One of the exciting developments is to enable printing even when the internet is performing poorly. Stream-processing of large and very large print jobs is our latest new development and it shows significant improvements to print speed.

 

Over to You

I hope this insightful interview with Christoph Hammer, President & CEO at ezeep, Inc. was helpful and now you know how to take printing at your coworking space to a new level.

Need further practical guidance on how to implement cloud printing at your flexible workspace? Find it in this article: Cloud Printing for Your Coworking Space — ezeep Integration.