Ricoh unveils centralized SaaS platform to enhance visibility, efficiency of print and digital communication workflows

CHICAGO, Oct. 1, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- (PRINT 18, Booth #3011) - Ricoh USA, Inc.today unveiled a new software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that empowers print service providers (PSPs) to easily control, manage and report on digital and print channels. The scalable and secured RICOH Communications Manager is a standardized platform used to manage, view and report on job status and activity. At a time when PSPs have never had more to keep track of, Communications Manager helps make sense of it all, bringing different communication channels and their underlying technologies and processes under a single, unified monitoring and management umbrella. The platform is designed to augment and replace portions of homegrown workflow and communications delivery systems that have become difficult to maintain, hard to scale, exposed to security and compliance changes, and are traditionally limited in upgradeability. Constantly evolving, Communications Manager will soon become a collaboration tool with end customers, who can have access to their unique portal for up-to-the-minute job information and influence their actual workflows.
In recent years, PSPs, like all businesses, are looking to technology advancements to help them deliver exceptional customer experiences. Meeting diverse customer needs as a single service provider today requires mastery of disparate workflows, software and output devices. To manage it all efficiently and effectively, PSPs need a well-executed, overarching strategy that provides demonstrable results. That can be difficult, especially when collecting data and analytics from multiple sources that often have varied KPIs, or that don't easily share information among them.
Communications Manager provides PSPs and their customers access to a scalable, configurable infrastructure that can be built on and leveraged to provide end-to-end insight into, and control over, communications. It can integrate, elevate and/or replace today's communication workflows that may be costly to maintain and can expose systems to unnecessary risk as a result of their disparity. Over time, these risks can significantly impact a business's ability to respond to customer and competitive demands, and will eventually impact profits and margins. Communications Manager streamlines handoffs between previously disconnected systems for more efficient workflows, provides valuable insight into performance and throughput, and allows for seamless collaboration between service providers and their customers.
The platform's available-anywhere, always-on portal provides a consistent experience for users to track status, history and next steps from anywhere their work takes them. This opens up new levels of visibility and collaboration, which can help drive better results, greater customer satisfaction and clearer ROI. Future updates to Communications Manager will be automatically available to subscribers as soon as they're launched via Ricoh's secured, cloud-hosted applications platform, including a planned update to allow portals to be white labeled for a more immersive brand experience.
"We spend a lot of time asking our customers how their work is changing and how we can help them adapt and thrive. They asked for more visibility into their operations, and with Communications Manager we made that a reality," said John Fulena, Vice President, Commercial & Industrial Printing Business Group, Ricoh USA, Inc. "For many, managing the various communications channels, and their impact on ROI, is the hot-button issue. Communications Manager contains, organizes and enhances visibility into that abundance, so PSPs can gain actionable insights from across a campaign, implement those insights across the campaign, and share progress and ROI information with customers, all from the same intuitive application."
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