Ricoh Unveils First-Ever iPad App Designed to Focus on Driving Commercial Printing Profit

WEST CALDWELL, N.J., Sept. 6, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Ricoh Americas Corporation, a leading provider of digital office equipment and advanced document management solutions and services, today unveiled a first-of-its-kind iPad app designed specifically to help grow commercial printing businesses.

The Ricoh TotalFlow Production App is a business development tool that helps commercial printers increase sales of high-value services via iPad-driven marketing presentations that guide face-to-face selling.

The app also helps these businesses operate more efficiently by providing online supplies ordering, service requests, user manuals, on-demand video training, and an up-to-the-minute media/substrate guide. All of these services, tailored within the app to the specific Ricoh production printer(s) a customer owns, can help sharply reduce costs.

The app in action

Consider a customer eager to order 5,000 identical postcards promoting a new venture. That's a low-margin, low-return campaign for the print/marketing services provider and the customer.  Ricoh's app helps foster the conversation between the PSP and the customer about the value of customized, and even multi-channel campaigns. The salesperson can use a presentation, video and white paper in the app to counsel the new client on the value and ROI associated with variable data printing (VDP), personalized images, QR Codes, personalized landing pages (pURLs) and more.

"The growing list of tools contained and accessible through the app help make the commercial printing business owner/salesperson a true business consultant able to sell more services of higher value, and deepen the customer relationship," said Tim Vellek, vice president, Production Printing Business Group, Ricoh Americas Corporation. "The app's self-service capabilities help Ricoh customers get more satisfaction and return from their production printers. An app like this is unique in our industry, and it's a platform we're building on."

Other scenarios

Maximizing uptime. A Ricoh Production Printer has reached the point of requiring preventative maintenance. The operator, using the Ricoh TotalFlow Production App, contacts Ricoh service and a call is placed. For those customers who take advantage of Ricoh's Trained Customer Replacement Units (TCRU) program, the operator can click through a video tutorial of the parts replacement procedure right on the tablet, leading to increased uptime and printer availability.

Printing innovation. The owner of a chic new restaurant has a fresh graphic design concept for a menu. The commercial printing salesperson finds her an exotic new substrate from the iPad app's Media Guide to complement the design. The customer is delighted with the suggestion, confident it will distinguish her business.

To help drive successful profit- and reputation-making scenarios like these, the Ricoh TotalFlow Production App aggregates a broad range of multimedia content, including original material available only through the app.

The Ricoh TotalFlow Production App is available for free to any registered member of the Ricoh Business Booster resource center, a value-add program available at no cost to any Ricoh production printer owner.

Ricoh will demo the Ricoh TotalFlow Production App next week at GRAPH EXPO 2011, the largest graphic communications exhibition and educational conference, in Booth 2600. The conference runs Sept. 11-14, 2011, at McCormick Place South, Chicago. The app is available today on the App Store.

Find out more about the TotalFlow Production App and Ricoh's full line of products, services and solutions for production print environments, please visit http://www.ricoh-usa.com/RPP

About Ricoh Americas Corporation

Ricoh Americas Corporation, headquartered in West Caldwell, N.J., is a subsidiary of Ricoh Company, Ltd., the 75-year-old leading provider of advanced office technology and innovative document imaging products, services and software, with fiscal year 2010 sales in excess of $23 billion. Ricoh's fully integrated hardware and customizable services and software help businesses share information efficiently and effectively by enabling customers to control the input, management and output of documents. Ricoh Americas Corporation, directly or through its network of authorized dealers, markets and distributes products in North, Central and South America. Information about Ricoh's complete range of offerings can be found at www.ricoh-usa.com. Visit Ricoh and see the demos at GRAPH EXPO Booth 2600.

© 2011 Ricoh Americas Corporation.  All rights reserved. All referenced product names are the trademarks of their respective companies.

SOURCE Ricoh Americas Corporation