In our overly digital world, printers may seem to be forgotten, but they still are a necessary part of any workplace. No matter how much of your marketing is reserved for online promotion only, or how much your business tries to be a paperless model, printing is still a major player in the majority of business processes, including promotion, customer acquisition and inner data management.

Moreover, the printing technology is not without its innovations. Smart solutions disrupt this sector by expediting and simplifying the printing processes. Other innovations bring new ways of using print technology for branding, communication and sustainability goals. Here are five ways modern print technology can help your business:

Enhancing your company’s promotion

One of the most common uses of print technology is producing marketing materials and promotional items. In other words, using printing for promotional campaigns and offline marketing efforts. Branded goods are still one of the oldest means of traditional marketing still used today, mostly since they remain to be efficient and cost-effective. For instance, giving out printed T-shirts and other apparel to either customers or employees (or even to friends and family) is a viable branding tactic most small enterprises have used in the past and still use today.

However, printing visuals on dark clothes was always a difficult challenge due to their receiving properties. But the introduction of the heat transfer paper technology changed the game, making printing on dark garments easier than ever, enabling businesses to mass-produce promotional items on a new level. Nowadays, new printing technology has the power to redefine how printed promotional goods are created.

Sustainable printing

While the term itself does sound like a marketing buzzword with nonexistent tangible benefits for your business, in practice, sustainable printing is not only beneficial for the environment but can also help you save considerable cash. One “green” printing solution that can help your business is a multifunction or all-in-one printer. When you use such a device, you not only save power – a single device versus at least two and often three – but also space and you reduce your use of consumables.

As for the printers themselves, most of the big-name printer manufacturers have developed new print engines over the past couple of years that are directed towards reducing the use of ink and toner as well as reducing or even removing the number of used print cartridges. For instance, Epson and Canon both produce no-cartridge, eco-friendly printer lines, while HP, Brother, and Xerox all have cartridge recycling programs that can help you dispose of used cartridges with more ease, all for the goal of reducing the impact on the environment.

Improving low-quality images with enhanced presses

Nowadays, the printing technology has come to the point where it aims to expedite the entire process by utilizing smart software to enhance low-res pictures and hence save you the trouble of sourcing adequate quality photos every time you have to print something for a meeting or a marketing campaign. You can select the level and type of image enhancement, ranging from color correction to saturation and brightness, enabling you to improve a picture right there on the spot.

3D printing

The fact of the matter is that technology has made quite a progress, even in the printing sector, and this is proven by printing no longer being restricted to paper and other 2D surfaces only. Today, 3D printing is the newest tech that keeps developing as time goes by. Not only does 3D printing leave cartridges and ink out of the equation, but businesses can also use it for manufacturing as well.

In other words, using only the materials you want, a 3D printer builds three-dimensional products by melting layers on top of each other. That means that there’s no expense for ink or toners. The fact that 3D printing technology is becoming popular in the business world proves that this technology will continue to advance further. Even now, 3D printing is being used to manufacture prosthetic limbs. Not only that, but NASA is considering using 3D printed materials for space missions.

Printing may not be the most famous IT technology in the world, but that doesn’t mean that the sector isn’t brimming with innovations. If you still believe that printing is solely for paper, then it’s time to take a closer look at what is available today.