Ricoh strengthens customer support with Vpress partnership

Print technology giant, Ricoh, and leading Web to Print systems developer, Vpress have formed a new partnership to ensure that print businesses have the tools they need to improve their adaptability and accelerate innovation.

“It is fundamental to the long-term growth of the UK print industry that technology developers in hardware and software come together to build partnerships that deliver tools and resources that enable the growth ambitions of its businesses and support them in adapting to an unpredictable market place, “ said Vpress sales director, Kelvin Bell, adding: “Ricoh can now provide customers an online Web to Print and brand management platform that delivers real value-add to that relationship.”

The impetus for the partnership came out of grass-roots feedback from Ricoh’s customer base that required a cost-effective solution that would allow them to enter the eCommerce market quickly and effectively. For Ricoh it forms part of their ongoing mission to take a holistic approach to their client’s requirements – seeking to assist them with short-term revenue generation support and long-term business development.

Ricoh national sales director Simon Isaacs explained: “The genesis for our partnership is that we identified the need in our overall business support offering for specific Web to Print system that would enable our customers to move from analogue to cloud-based design, specification and order systems for their clients.

“Several of our biggest customers work with Vpress and so, we naturally wanted to investigate their offering. We are very pleased to have built this partnership from this starting point and the future is very bright in terms of its mutual value and the additional business support we can provide to our customers. We believe in personal relationships being the foundation for success, and Vpress are a great team that also embrace this philosophy. They are also passionate, understand their purpose and truly believing in what they do.”

Vpress technology is also important for businesses that want to truly automate their ordering system and ensure payment at the point of purchase, as it integrates with systems, such as Sales Salesforce, SAP/Ariba, Coupa and Oracle.

Explaining the wider importance of the new Vpress and Ricoh relationship, Vpress sales director, Kelvin Bell said: “We will help Ricoh’s customers, the printer, automate and streamline their customer’s experience into their print shop. This ultimately means that, instead of a traditional set-up where Ricoh is a vendor and the printer is their customer, they really do become partners – pursuing a common goals of business growth.

“In addition to assisting these companies with capturing and streamlining more work upstream, we also have done very significant development work with integrating our platforms into Ricoh’s scalable MIS system; Avanti Slingshot.

“This also ultimately helps removes cost from their client’s businesses downstream. A good example of this is the manual processing of orders out to trade print houses. The time and physical touchpoints needed to carry this our carries with it inefficiencies. Vpress Web to Print technology can streamline and automate this process, so that the team can focus on generating value and being more productive.”

The ultimate benefits spelt out by Ricoh is that the use of Vpress technology, tied into its Avanti Slingshot system, results in optimised Workflows, reduced costs and errors and improved turnaround time. Additionally, it provides the opportunity for print providers to generate new revenue streams through enhanced services that can be processed via the web and tracked and managed throughout the entire workflow; all without the need for human intervention.

The other key advantage to the new relationship is that Vpress Coreprint will integrate with Ricoh Production Workflow tools, which automate everything from colour management to imposition.  Over and above that, the Vpress platform can handle the most complex levels of workflow integration, but it can also work to simply push orders from online to a hot folder structure feeding just one press.

The Perfect Fit
The last year has seen the acceleration of an existing trend, where SME printers that mainly service consumer markets are looking to divest themselves of some in-house print production capacity and focus on adding value to their customers’ businesses through design work, as well as creative and technical consultancy. In effect, they are becoming more print management agency than a print production factory.

This segment of businesses is also increasingly pushing commoditised work, such as business cards, flyers and A4 folded brochures to trade printers, they need a way to streamline this process. And at the same time, they need to give their customers the opportunity to order and specify their own product lines quickly and efficiently.

This is where a partnership like that of Ricoh and Vpress is so powerful, as these SME print businesses can maximise the usage and potential of their in-house print production technology, while still making a profit from work done by a trade supplier.

Ricoh national sales director Simon Isaacs provided further context for what has motivated the partnership: “Covid-19 has caused a huge amount of disruption and caused a lot of business damage. Trying to take some positives from this time though, it has given a lot of business owners and managers space to really look at their business in the round, assess how they need to diversify and change to remain relevant and fulfil their full customer requests.

“Web to Print software married to state-of-the-art Workflows and press technology –– be it printing direct to everything from paper to fabric –– is fundamental to powering this change. It means that they can focus on the pieces of their business that provide a competitive advantage and add value to their customer’s business, while we take care of these utilities that power that advantage.”

He concluded: “At the heart of a Vpress is a consultative approach to technology development and integration with our customers.  It’s not just the purchase of a piece of software. We are now taking that approach into the Ricoh environment and making our respective offerings more compelling. More than that, it is a real joy for our teams working together and we look forward to an expansion of our partnership.”