InfoPrint Insights Blog

Ricoh has always kept the goals if its customers top of mind.  To help further develop these applications, solutions and services Chris Reid, vice president of business development at Ricoh has taken the lead on honing in on these focus areas to deliver options for services bureaus, commercial printers and everyone in between looking for the newest innovations in production print.

Recently we sat down with Chris to talk about his position.    What do you think about this new role?

Vice President, Business Development for Ricoh Production Print Solutions

What is the rationale behind your new role?

As traditional print providers embark on the transition of becoming more of a marketing service provider, they seek new ways to produce more pages efficiently, to use a single device for black-and-white transactional and color graphic arts jobs, and to find tools that can support different types of applications.  This is a big shift from the norm of yesterday and they need a true partner to help them successfully achieve this goal.

What specific areas are you targeting?

There are four areas where we foresee potential growth and believe we can provide the most value to our customers; Managed ADF Services, PDF enhancements for ADF, Marketing Service Provider [MSP] and Commercial Print Solutions.  These are areas we have years of expertise in and the market has recognized our leadership in these areas, which makes them natural focus areas for us.

How does Managed ADF Services play into the growth strategy?

Managed ADF Services is our cloud-based offering that allows customers to implement an ADF environment based on InfoPrint ProcessDirector without the up-front costs or any administrative training. With this model, customers can move from a heavy capital investment to a lower up-front cost and per-envelope charge, which gives them tremendous flexibility.  Flexibility is key to delivering variable data and multiple types of output. As more companies look to the cloud for services, Managed ADF Services enables them to tap into the benefits of the cloud with a trusted partner.

What will Enhanced PDF provide to customers?

Ricoh is the global leader in ADF – Enhanced PDF extends our leadership in document integrity with ADF to a new set of organizations using PDF. We can deliver the most advanced ADF applications in the world, but our ADF implementations are all based on AFP [Advanced Function Presentation].   Enhanced PDF adds native PDF support to our existing ADF solution using InfoPrint ProcessDirector.

Today, Ricoh is the only vendor in the world with an ADF workflow that supports both native AFP and native PDF, with no transforms.  Not only does this continue on our path of providing flexibility, but it helps save customers money and ensure document integrity by not requiring transforms.

Can you explain how you plan to expand the Ricoh offerings into the Marketing Services Provider space?

Print service bureaus, commercial printers and corporate organizations are trying to extend their marketing capabilities. MSPs allow these smaller print customers to implement basic to advanced direct marketing tools, from simple web-to-print applications through Precision Marketing and Data Analytics capabilities. Customers will be able to print dynamic, personalized direct marketing materials and integrate e-mail campaigns, personalized URLs, advanced data analytics, track and report on response rates, and refine their messaging overtime. By leveraging these capabilities, PSPs can shift more toward an MSP role and realize new revenue opportunities.

Let’s talk about the fourth initiative — Commercial Print Solutions. What’s it all about?

The Commercial Print Solutions Initiative is about complementary technologies that Ricoh offers commercial printers to help expand their businesses in new ways. We are broadening our portfolio for this purpose by enhancing the capabilities of the InfoPrint 5000 and our workflow tools by adding PDF support, and integrating both EnfocusPitStop and Ultimate Technographics products. Our goal is to help printers move their businesses from costly traditional methods to newer digital technology to make them more efficient and broaden their offerings.

We have Commercial Print Solutions customers today using our InfoPrint 5000, InfoPrint 4100 and InfoPrint Pro C901 to do graphic arts applications. Frederic Printing in Denver and Re.be.l. in Italy are just two of the many customers we have that are already producing books. We are also heavily engaged with some of the largest printers in the world to provide them with our enhanced technology on the InfoPrint 5000.

Thank you, Chris!

So, what are your thoughts on these four areas of growth? Please feel free to contact us via this blog if you have any questions or would like to learn more about any of the topics discussed.

Best,

The Ricoh Strategic Communications Team

Today is the last day at Graph Expo and we are winding down. It has been a busy week with a lot of great conversations happening that are still going strong today! From Ricoh’s perspective, this was an all out success.

The Ricoh team that made it happen!

The one consistent theme we’ve been hearing is commercial, commercial, commercial!  This is the rallying cry that was heard everywhere in the Ricoh booth this week.  From our Business Development software and solutions area through to our high end continuous forms InfoPrint 5000 section of the booth we’ve heard the call for commercial print applications.  It’s been a great pleasure showing attendees exactly how we can help them enable and produce these applications – especially highlighting examples of work we are already doing with some of the world’s leading commercial printers.

Rob Malkin, one of Ricoh’s books and publishing guru said “it feels like a coming out party for commercial print where we can show improved quality, flexibility, and our new dryer.  It is like a best kept secret being unveiled.”  Commercial printers are really excited about the possibilities they are seeing here from output including direct mail, short run books, election ballots and much more.

Just have a listen here at what our colleague, George Promis has to say: George Promis @ Graph Expo

Echoing Rob’s comments, our Sales Specialist from Quebec, Canada, Christian Lajoie, commented on the value of having such commercially-focused demos.  The Ricoh booth has been a flurry of activity since opening day where the customers and future customers can truly get their hands on the machine.

Lights, camera, action!

Customers raved about the Ricoh customer appreciation event on Monday night that was “overseen” by Sue – the largest, most well preserved T Rex ever found!  Key customers were treated to cocktails and a wonderful dinner in the stunning and majestic Field Museum.  Our guests were able to tour the impressive exhibits with no crowds at their leisure throughout the evening.

As you can tell from our blogs, videos, tweets and Facebook updates, we’ve been nothing short of thrilled with Graph Expo this year.  Let the countdown begin to October 7, 2012!

Best,

Michele Bollig

The first day of Graph Expo was the tenth anniversary of September 11^th.  This is an emotional day for every American and it hits close to home for me particularly because my son is a United States Marine, who signed up the week after 9/11.  I’ve watched him travel overseas to protect us all – and now watch as he works with the Wounded Warriers to help ease the pain of other soldiers returning home from war.  It’s impressive, emotional and scary all at the same time.

The American Flag was waving in the booth's animated signage during a ceremony at GraphExpo as a tribute to 9/11

From a personal perspective, I was very touched by the folks at Graph Expo yesterday due to the efforts they put in place to ensure that 9/11 was remembered during the show.  It was touching and completely appropriate because of how that day affected us all.  I was in awe as I watched all of the movement stop at each booth as the procession went through the show floor. 

After overcoming that emotional moment, I realized how impressive we all are at the show.  We portray the hope and courage that will move us forward. We are here to show off our technologies, solutions and hardware to help potential customers, yet can take that extra moment to honor those who we’ve lost and who protect us. 

At the Ricoh booth, we’ve been focused on honoring customers, soldiers, friends and everyone in between.  It was a special day and I was very happy to be a part of it.

One major focus of our booth is helping commercial printers implement digital printing in their operations.  Our own Joe Caruso has some insight he’s uncovered at the show today that he’d like to share with you all. Take it away, Joe…

Commercial printers – digital is not that scary…

Until recently, printers only cared about print quality and speed.  But today, the name of the game has changed.  Printers must now look at what their end-to-end offerings can do for customers and find a way to stand out among the competition.  Today, there is virtually no difference between engine number one and engine number two, or three… It’s the applications that are going to stand out.

Joe Caruso is loving his job as a member of our new Commercial Printing Solutions team! Thanks Joe for spreading that joy to our customers!

The biggest challenge today is the data and how to optimize, sort and arrange it all.  Data is key to maintaining and expanding customer bases.  And in today’s environments, it’s not coming from one single datastream or channel.  It’s coming from print, online, email, mobile and more.  How can one keep up without a strong workflow and professional services solution?  It’s nearly impossible.

At the Ricoh Graph Expo booth, we are showing how our complete, end-to-end solutions can help a commercial printer determine what the best digital move is for their specific operation and how we can help them achieve their goals based on that distinction.  Through our experience, this transition of implementing digital is not a one time switch flip.  It’s a growing experience, and we’re here to help each step of the way throughout the whole experience.

If you’d like to learn more about the services we offer to commercial printers, please stop by booth 2600 and find out. .I’m Joe, you can’t miss me!

Best,

Michele Bollig, Worldwide Marketing Manager

and

Joe Caruso, Global Production Development, Commercial Print

To kick off Graph Expo season, Ricoh hosted a Virtual Media and Analyst Day, also known as “VMD”, on August 17. From Boulder and New Jersey we shared news about upcoming products and solutions that our teams will be demonstrating and discussing at Graph Expo next month in Chicago.

More than 30 media representatives and analysts tuned into our webcast from around the world where we shared key announcements around production print hardware, marketing solutions, multichannel communications, ink estimation tools and other important news from the Ricoh Family.

InfoPrint 5000 customer Brett Birky, VP of Sales at Frederic Printing in Denver, was one of our featured speakers. He shared his experience with the InfoPrint 5000 and participants were able to interact directly by asking him questions about future plans and sharing their thoughts.

Other key speakers included Chris Reid, VP of Business Development, Miranda Reeves, Software Product Manager, Mike Herold Worldwide Product Manager, Production Color, as well as several key executives from Ricoh. If you missed out on our pre-Graph Expo VMD this year and are interested in checking it out please e-mail Meghan Attreed at mattreed@breakawaycom.com.

We’re looking forward to sharing this news with everyone as Graph Expo gets closer, so stay tuned!

Best,

Sandra Zoratti

Today consumers are prioritizing which bills to pay and which can hold off for another few weeks. To ensure on-time payment, companies must create trust with their customers. In a recent study by the CMO Council, “What’s Critical in the Utility Vertical,” experts analyzed this process in the utility industry. What does it take to create customer loyalty?

The CMO Council interviewed more than 1,000 utility consumers and 100 utility marketers to get the answers. The report “What’s Critical in the Utility Vertical” unveils interesting statistics about customers’ needs, requirements and opinions. These 30 pages of findings help us better understand the utility consumer. The bottom line? Marketing with relevant and timely messages in the utility space is necessary to create loyalty with customers.

The report found that customers are more likely to put off paying their utility bill when budgets are tight as they consider utility payments less urgent than other bills. So how can utility payments become a top priority? Utility companies need to satisfy the customer and their needs. With utility bills come fees and extra costs with each bill, and customers are finding themselves disputing charges more than before. They expect reliable service for the extra hassle and grief. From the survey, the top customer complaints were service outages and interruptions, long wait times for customer service representatives and increased costs without increased service.  So what is the proposed fix? When asked which messages customers surveyed recalled from their utility provider, the report found:

• Nearly 45 percent recall receiving information about how to reduce consumption.
• 40 percent remember receiving information on how to lower or manage payments through various payment options.
• Only 30 percent of consumers recall receiving general information about going green.

Customers want more information related to their service, such as tips and helpful content to help their bill cost decrease or payment options. Need proof?

• An impressive 40 percent of customers indicated that they purchased the products recommended to them by their utility companies.
• Among those that recalled receiving communications from their utility companies, 73 percent actively used the messages detailing specific offers, tips or solutions.
• Compare that to 67 percent of consumers who responded or reacted to general messages around green practices.

Customers are receptive and looking for information. Utility companies must take advantage of this with the tools and information they have to build relevant, targeted content for their customer.  “What’s Critical in the Utility Vertical” reveals the different needs of the customer, how they react to a certain types of marketing and the tactics that most successfully engage the customer to create a meaningful, loyal relationship.

“What’s Critical in the Utility Vertical” was first unveiled in April at Go Beyond the Meter, a conference, community and coalition targeting the Utility industry.  Liz Miller, Vice President of the CMO Council, discussed the study with attendees and explained specifically how to implement the tactics at individual utility companies.

The report is available to download here. In my opinion, this is a must-read for all utility marketers. A vast amount of research has been done, and the results are too valuable to miss.

Check it out and let me know what you think!
By Lee Gallagher

Recently InfoPrint Solutions was recognized by the Colorado BMA with its 2011 Gold Key Award for Social Media, for its success in building and growing engagement communities through social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter.

InfoPrint Solutions' marketing team members pose with the Gold Key award!

InfoPrint Solutions wanted to increase interaction with the print community; better communicate socially with our Solutions Partners, customers and employees; expand brand awareness across new vertical markets; and enhance visibility with media and analyst contacts.

Three main social media tools were leveraged to build these communities and engage our various constituents – Twitter, Facebook and UStream – in addition to this blog, several other blogs and a YouTube channel. The Gold Key recognition was specific to our work with Twitter, Facebook and UStream, so let’s focus on those.

We made InfoPrint Solutions central to the print production conversation on Twitter by building a strong following and actively engaging in industry conversations.  To help increase the fun factor, Twitter contests helped contribute to our success – such as the race to be our 1,000th Twitter follower –  and our “Did You Know?” series on both Twitter and Facebook, which enables us to share interesting, fun facts about the company and our solutions .

For Facebook, a cohesive Company page was developed to create a single stop in the popular social forum for the global audience to visit when seeking recent news, articles, event information and other highlights from InfoPrint Solutions.  To engage in two-way communication, team members work to conduct polls, encourage “likes,” ask questions and simply congratulate our fans on their positive news.

For UStream, InfoPrint Solutions optimized its use of web video tools to conduct “Virtual Media Days” (VMDs) prior to global industry events to ensure these audiences are all informed of our activities, news and updates in advance of events.  To date, we have held four VMDs and the communications team worked to ensure that the feedback from this event would be positive and productive.

Now, drum roll please…for the results!  With both Twitter and Facebook, we’ve seen incredible growth and engagement statistics that signal a dramatic increase in the company’s level of interaction in the social conversation for the industry.

In less than five months, our Facebook followership grew more than 250 percent, and currently we have more than 320 active fans in more than 20 countries.  On average the page gets nearly 900 views a month, with 20 percent of those visitors clicking through to view more information on our events, company information and images.

Similarly our Twitter presence has continued to grow and evolve since its launch.  In 2010, our followers increased on average of 62 each month and we acquired more than 700 new followers in 2010 with nearly 1,300 current followers.  We have also seen increased interaction with our customers and Solutions Partners, and the channel has been a great tool for promoting our news and activities at tradeshows and events – not to mention an excellent way for InfoPrint Solutions to interact with attendees following the shows, where typically we have at least one live Tweeter providing live updates from the show floor.

The VMD was also a success from every angle.  At the time of the live web conference, there were more than 50 reporters, analysts and bloggers registered from around the world.  From these reporters, in addition to others, InfoPrint Solutions received more than 600 articles about our Graph Expo news and secured onsite interviews at the show from over 20 top tier targets.

Social media strategies will vary for almost every company, but by clearly defining goals for each channel companies can harness the power of these networks to achieve success!  Check out our social media networks and join the conversation! And, please share any social media lessons learned or tactics you love with us, as well.

Best,

Beth Etherton, Global Communications Manager

Joe Czyszczewski, Chief Sustainability Officer at InfoPrint Solutions, recently led a seminar for InfoPrint Solutions’ customers on sustainability. He was joined by Andy Whyle, Environment Officer at Ricoh’s manufacturing site at Telford, who discussed his team’s impressive results in achieving zero waste to landfill.

Czyszczewski encouraged his audience to consider how sustainability goes beyond the manufacturing of the printer and to focus instead on its usage. A life cycle assessment estimates that paper contributes 80 percent of the usage carbon footprint of an InfoPrint 1570MP. Surprisingly energy consumption, manufacturing and end-of-life disposal play a much smaller role.

Given paper’s significance, some of InfoPrint Solutions’ customers are choosing to switch to lighter weight papers to cut CO2 emissions. Along with requiring fewer trees, lighter paper can require less energy during the printing process.

The type of printing process has a large impact on the energy carbon footprint. Toner-based printing requires the entire page to be heated to fuse the toner, even if the printing is only a few percent coverage. In comparison, inkjet printing sprays the ink on the page and may only requireenough energy to dry the amount of ink used. According to InfoPrint Solutions tests, inkjetcan use half the energy of toner-based printing.

One of Czyszczewski’s missions is to raise awareness that switching from paper statements to online statements does not necessarily equate to green. He wants customers and consumers to start thinking about the manufacturing, e-waste and energy consumption of data centers to store data, the CO2 impact of email distribution and compare those figures to a renewable resource – paper.

Czyszczewski talked about the carbon footprint of the paper manufacturing industry and the different ways of recycling paper. Paper made with 30 percent recycled content has become an industry norm. Although this may seem low, the cost of the paper can increase one percent for every ten percent more recycled content.

InfoPrint Solutions' "Joe C." at Ricoh’s manufacturing site at Telford

The buzzword – or rather buzz expression – of the day was “conflict minerals.” While Whyle highlighted the fact that many of the elements required for semiconductors will be depleted within our lifetime, Czyszczewski talked about how corporate duty of care obliges organisations to check the chain of custody and look at the certification of well-managed mines where minerals are sourced.

Up to now customers have looked for ‘Energy Star’ as the third party endorsement of a product that will be energy efficient. This is evolving with Czyszczewski predicting that EPEAT will become the desired mark. EPEAT examines the sustainability of the supplier and aspects of products beyond energy.

The seminar took place in Telford, the heart of the industry revolution. As Whyle pointed out, that noteworthy event meant that Telford also holds the dubious title of being the first place to produce industrial waste.

Whyle examined Ricoh’s challenges as it pursues an aggressive corporate goal of cutting waste to an eighth of its levels in 2000. Ricoh’s site at Telford, manufactures the InfoPrint and Ricoh ProC900 series of cutsheet printers as well as remanufacturing numerous toner cartridges and copiers. All of which produces much waste toner, packaging and hazardous waste.

Whyle’s team is focusing on recycling and reuse and by implementing a change of culture and waste materials segregation at source, the site achieved zero waste to landfill in 2001 and profited as waste went from being a cost to the bottom line to becoming a revenue stream through the sale of materials.

Part of the culture change included some pain points such as removing all personal bins at workstations and even putting locks on some waste bins to ensure the right waste was going in the right bins. Through these measures, Andy’s team has saved over 13,000 tons of waste going to landfill. That’s the same as nearly 1800 single-decker buses. Given the nature of endeavour, of course those must be hybrid buses.

Go Beyond the Meter: Helping Utility Executives Address their Customer Communications

InfoPrint Solutions is proud to announce Go Beyond the Meter: a conference, a community, a coalition and for the benefit of the Utility Industry.  This organization has been developed to support Marketing, Operations, and IT Utility Professionals.  As part of this new initiative, InfoPrint Solutions will be hosting a peer-to-peer forum from April 26-28^th in Boulder, CO.  The goal of this event is to bring together utility professionals to discuss, share and present emerging trends and technological advances in communications strategies and implementations.

Smart meters, smart grids, and smart clouds are changing the way business is conducted every day.  Customer-centric communication is an emerging trend – not only in the commercial space – but with any company working to deliver messages to its customers.  With varying government regulations, advancing environmental mandates and the advancement of smart meters, utility companies are finding the need to better segment and target their rate-payers.  This is ultimately driving the need for integrated marketing, operations and IT.

Sandra Zoratti, Vice President of Global Solutions Marketing at InfoPrint Solutions, will host the conference with an expert line-up of speakers, all advising attendees on how to make the shift to implementing a data-driven campaign to assure targeted and relevant customer communications.  As with any Precision Marketing implementation, these advancements will ultimately help grow customer loyalty as many utilities become unregulated, causing an increase in competition.

Keynote speakers include:

• Jill Feblowitz, Vice President of Utilities, Gas and Oil for IDC Insights, is a nationally recognized thought leader in the application of information technology to the business challenges of the energy industry.  Jill’s session will address IDC’s perspectives and insight as to how some companies are planning to address recent utility challenges.

• George Williams, Chief Executive Officer for Strategic Solutions, will provide insight into customer communication strategies, document design and customer communication project management and share his take on the “Project Management Bermuda Triangle.”  He will talk about communication through customer-facing transactional documents – both paper and electronic.

• Wes Friesen, Manager of Revenue Collection and Community Offices for Portland General Electric (PGE), will share best practices and advice that he has seen within his successes and other national operations successes.

• Jay Robinson, Senior Solutions Consultant, Professional Services and Software at InfoPrint Solutions, will discuss how InfoPrint Solutions partnered with LADWP to refresh their entire customer communications infrastructure.  To better communicate with their customers they implemented an Automated Document Factory, to increase customer satisfaction, decrease call center and mail costs while driving quality throughout the entire process.

• Mike Bryant, Worldwide Practice Leader: Strategy & Marketing Analytics for InfoPrint Solutions will discuss how customer communications managers are quickly recognizing the need to integrate and leverage data in order to develop deeper insights into their existing client base and turn this new insight into relevant communications to drive improved client communications.

Additionally, at the event the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and InfoPrint Solutions will unveil their newest “What’s Critical in the Vertical: Utilities” study focused on the utility industry.  Liz Miller, Vice President of CMO Council, will discuss the study which will address topics associated with programs, promotions, productivity and profitability relative to optimizing and leveraging the data that utilities work with everyday.  Liz will be on hand at the event to discuss specifically how to implement these tactics at individual utility companies.

Be sure to check Go Beyond the Meter.com for the release of the report in early May.  Until then, watch Jay Robinson discuss the LADWP project in a four-part video series.

We’re excited for the opportunity to host this peer-to-peer event, to help utilities reach their customers not only in a more targeted, relevant way, but to also help create these communications as efficiently as possible.

For more information, please visit Go Beyond theMeter.com.  Be sure to check back often.  As we proceed through the event, we’ll be updating the site with event news!

To make sure you don’t miss out on the next event, join The Tribe at ProfitWithLoyalty.com or the Utility Community at GoBeyondTheMeter.com.

Best,

Amanda Thall

Global Solutions Marketing Manager