A new AI-cloud application, introduced on June 23 by Toshiba America Business Solutions (TABS), essentially is designed to automate busy work. Elevate Sky Workflow will help to free up time, allowing people to deliver more meaningful, higher-impact projects, Toshiba contends. The company’s AI-powered solution accomplishes this by instantaneously capturing and processing data, and then deploying large language models (LLMs) to route documents to appropriate areas. Documents can be ingested from any source—MFPs, mobile, tablets, desktop, scanners, shared folders.
Toshiba Tec’s software engineering team in Japan has been busy perfecting this office workflow automation project for the past 18 months, according to Peter Davey, VP of Solutions and Professional Services at TABS. Elevate Sky Workflow is all about simplifying the business automation process, he explained. “By adding workflow functionality to MFPs, we are extending value beyond print/scan modes,” Davey noted. The new “intelligent” workflow solution automates document management, filing, and retrieval by combining the power of AI with Toshiba’s basic optical character recognition (OCR) engines as well as its more advanced, zone OCR capabilities, which can process up to three zones (text, numbers, barcodes).
Toshiba says AI-powered Elevate Sky Workflow manages paperwork without all the “work.”
Chris Popovic, TABS manager of National Solutions Business Development & Program Delivery, lent additional perspective: “Toshiba’s vision is to democratize this technology beyond the enterprise level . . . to leverage AI’s power for the SMB [small and medium size business] space,” said Popovic, who recently led The Cannata Report through a product demonstration.
AI-enabled content extraction is where the true value is added. “It’s ‘magical,’” like doing paperwork but making the work part disappear. The tedious, time-consuming, manual process of people keying in data no longer is required. Simply put, this highly automated, cost-effective workflow solution “frees up labor . . . [and] can compress project cycles from months to minutes, saving hundreds of hours,” Davey reported. “The ROI [return on investment] is appealing.” (See pricing structure below.)
“Compress project cycles from months to minutes . . .”
– Peter Davey
Davey pointed out that, for so-called smart data capture and document processing, Toshiba uses Microsoft’s AI stack, which the Big Tech conglomerate rolled out in 2024. He called it “revolutionary and . . . production grade. It’s self-trained and constantly learning,” the TABS veep added. In addition, Elevate Sky Workflow seamlessly coordinates with Box.net, Dropbox, Google Drive, MS OneDrive and SharePoint as well as other popular cloud-storage platforms for archival purposes. “Because it augments existing processes, there’s a comfort level built in,” Davey believes.
Conectivity is key for Toshiba’s new workflow.
In the demo, Popovic illustrated another of Elevate Sky Workflow’s impressive features: How the cloud-based Toshiba app seamlessly communicates with Celonis, Inc.’s Make.com and Zapier Inc. platforms by using an integrated platform as a service (iPaaS) model. In addition to these platforms, it integrates with some 2,000 business apps, too.
“Everyone wants to get rid of servers,” Popovic observed. He showed how, with intuitive templates, the new workflow literally takes mere minutes to set up.
Toshiba’s Elevate Sky Timeline
- In January 2024, Toshiba bid farewell to print frustration with its proprietary, cloud-based Elevate Sky Print Management offering, The centralized system makes it easy to deploy and manage printers throughout organizations, TABS says, while enhancing security and optimizing costs. Its single, universal print driver sets up networked printers, allowing for convenient printing from anywhere.
- This past March (2025), TABS leveraged artificial intelligence (AI) in another application that can instantly translate documents into more than 190 languages. Elevate Sky® Translate simplifies multilingual communication with accurate, real-time translations via Toshiba e-BRIDGE® multifunction printers (MFPs).
Toshiba e-BRIDGE MFP
In the past, obtaining intelligent document data capture benefits required massive capital (cash) outlays. “On-prem [premise] distributive capture solutions had their time and also had limitations,” concluded Davey. Floating now in “the cloud,” Elevate Sky Workflow is taking end users to AI auto-magicland with monthly price points ranging from as low as $45 up to $300. “Toshiba’s pricing is based on clicks, so there are no device licenses,” Davey clarified for dealers. “It’s a term-based consumption model . . . for up to 63 months.”
