• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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BusinessDay

Fujitsu promotes digitalisation of paper with new tech scanners

Fujitsu tech scanners

Japanese technology company, Fujitsu, has embarked on an intense strategy to create awareness and promote the digitalisation of paper documents by converting hard copy into softcopy data sets with its line-up of state-of the art scanning solutions.

Fujitsu is an established brand in the document imaging market, featuring new technology driven scanning solutions in the workgroup, departmental, and production-level scanner categories.

With 37 distribution partners globally, making $300 million in annual revenues, Fujitsu plans to entrench its value added scanning solutions in Nigeria and Africa, and has partnered with popular the IQ distributions, authorised distributor for Fujitsu scanners, batteries, components and IoT’s in Nigeria and sub Saharan Africa.

Speaking at the Fujitsu forum and product launch in Lagos recently, Amechi Richard Ani CEO, IQ Distribution Nigeria Limited said that although the brand is not yet very popular in Nigeria, Fujitsu is positioned rightly to lead the market because of the quality, durability, reliability and affordability when it comes to digital imaging solutions.

“Already, banks in Nigeria understand the need to digitize data. Before now, there were bottle necks between distribution of Fujitsu items in Nigeria especially because of the challenges of sourcing foreign exchange but now, with IQ distributions, a wholly Nigerian company as authorised distributors of these products, we are able to accept Naira payments with fast delivery because we are going to be stocking the products in Nigeria in our various warehouses and service centres in Lagos, Abuja, Port-Harcourt, Enugu, and we are planning to site in Kano to cover the north. We also offer after sales services such as installation, integration, repairs and returns,” Ani said.

During his presentation, Adrain Cafferkey, regional manager, Fujitsu Africa, disclosed that 17 banks across Africa currently use Fujitsu products in their move towards digitalisation. The company which develops document imaging applications is targeting banks, insurance companies, government agencies, health organisations, oil & gas, and corporate retail markets.

According to Cafferkey, “It is all about the digitalisation of paper and we provide scanners that allows us to digitalise paper.”

“Fujitsu has the number one market share globally, with a 44 percent market share –  so out of every two scanners sold in the world, one is a Fujitsu. The unique features are certainly the image quality and the robustness of our products. We have end users such as some banks that have used ur products for 10-11 years with very little or no problem, so it is an extremely robust product that you can integrate with a lot of document management solutions and our image quality is second to none,” he told BusinessDay.

Speaking on the company’s strategy to deepen its bran in Nigeria, Cafferkey said the company hosts several technical workshops to train local expertise in country, which is extremely important.

“We develop local expertise that have the capacity to support, maintain and repair our products. We also organise events to create awareness on the whole digitalisation journey and why people would require document scanners,” he said.

To curb counterfeiting of its products, the company has taken steps to standardise its products by the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) and develop relationships with law enforcement agencies to make sure that counterfeited products are confiscated and the due cause of the law takes place.

“We also have an excellent relationship with our sister company, Fujitsu America which is called FCPA. They inform us if any product is attempted to be brought into Nigeria. One thing that we like to emphasise is that products not bought in the country would not have warranty, so should a situation arise, the end user, at their own cost, has to send that product back to wherever it was bought. Also, it deprives the Nigerian economy because you can only grow your economy by buying local, investing and supporting local businesses,” Cafferkey said.

 

Jumoke Akiyode-Lawanson