Peter Williams, head of printing, Euroupe, opens the official opening of the centre
Ricoh has opened a new Customer Experience Centre for production print clients located within the existing Ricoh Products factory in Telford, UK.
The centre is a working print production centre of and features integrated solutions from the company and its partners that will allow visitors to see a variety of workflows and production processes as they might exist in their own facilities.
The centre will help clients identify business and production improvements, allowing them to walk through every process as they explore, test and confirm solutions for their businesses.
‘This new Customer Experience Centre reinforces Ricoh’s commitment to the UK print production market and will demonstrate our manufacturing excellence across multiple platforms and markets,’ explained Stephen Palmer, head of production print. ‘Much more than a showroom; it is a working environment that will allow visitors to experience state-of-the-art production processes and techniques. We are looking forward to helping clients experience, in a highly visual way, exactly how Ricoh can help them add value, increase efficiency, improve operations and take a more proactive approach to sustainability.’
The company will use the centre to conduct internal and external training, and to test processes as part of its research & development, showcasing Ricoh’s specialist inkjet development laboratory.
Included in the solutions on show will be Avanti Slingshot Print MIS, which Ricoh has now added to its portfolio.
This addition will allow European print services providers to benefit from the improved operational planning, transparency and reporting capabilities delivered by Avanti Slingshot.
‘Print operations face a number of challenges,’ explained Mr Palmer. ‘They are focused on bringing in more orders just to sustain last year’s revenue, and achieving profitability on each job if possible. The difference between those that are succeeding and those that are struggling is that the former have an intimate understanding of costs, they know where they are taking their business, and they have a passion for continuous improvement. It is Ricoh’s goal to bring products and services to the market that will enhance productivity, efficiency and performance for print-based businesses to be successful.’
To help more businesses achieve this in practice, the software provides tools and solutions that make the entire workflow more efficient, from estimating, job ticketing, purchasing and inventory management, through to scheduling, shipping and billing. It gives print services providers a real-time view of all job costing, job tracking and billing information, enabling them to deliver better client service and improve profitability.
The product incorporates business intelligence including CRM, dashboards and reporting, production planning such as estimating, planned purchasing, sales orders, inventory management and scheduling, fulfilment, shipping and billing into one system. It is designed to easily integrate with third party applications and equipment and includes robust Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), leveraging industry protocols such as JDF/JMF and XML to eliminate ‘islands of automation’ in the print shop where many bolt-on solutions have been added but do not talk to each other. The result is a streamlined and integrated business and production workflow. Browser-based, it enables anytime/anywhere access and can be served up from the cloud or hosted, providing print services providers with a level of flexibility and security that suits their individual needs.
‘This new platform addresses the complexities and unique workflows of the multiple lines of business that printers now compete in, including offset and digital printing, large format, marketing services, mailing and fulfilment,’ concluded Mr Palmer. ‘It connects business and production processes, enables integration of web to print platforms, creates estimating consistency, manages material requirements and outside purchases, provides customer service representatives with information they need to do their job in a timely fashion and holds all sales information centrally.’
