Less Paper, More Digital Documents

The move by energy companies to digitize workflow is creating a ripple effect. Increasingly, these organizations are revamping business processes and replacing paper documents with digital exchanges. As a result, printer use is dropping dramatically.

As the pandemic raged, businesses replaced legacy, paper based business processes with new digital alternatives. Energy companies boosted the digitization of their customer and supply-chain interactions and their internal operations by three to four years, according to a McKinsey survey. The share of digital or digitally enabled products in their portfolios accelerated by seven years.

The Many Benefits of Digital Interactions

Utilities are interested in the change for a few reasons. Digital transmissions remove friction, lower waiting times, and replace manual processes with automated transactions.

Also, costs are lowered. Companies do not pay for paper and printing supplies, like cartridges. 

Consequently, worldwide hardcopy peripherals market shipments declined 20.4% year over year in the third quarter of 2021, so nearly 21 million units shipped, according to data from International Data Corporation (IDC).

In addition, printer add on revenue is declining. In this market, the bulk of vendors’ revenue comes from cartridge sales. That area generates about $2 to $3 for every $1 made selling printers.

The peripheral market is undergoing a dramatic change. Energy companies are swapping out expensive, often inefficient paper processes with digital interactions. As a result, their use of printers and its add-on supplies is dropping.