Print service providers can defy commoditization by becoming full-fledged marketing service providers

MALVERN, PA – The commercial print business isn’t easy these days with diminished print volumes, shorter runs, more demand for personalized communications, and business customers with needs reaching far beyond paper-based marketing collateral. Print service providers, quickly becoming commoditized, need to find new ways to go beyond print, grow their revenue and lock in loyal business customers.

That’s why many print service providers are aspiring to become full-fledged marketing service providers. To help them, Ricoh Americas Corporation today further detailed its strategy for Ricoh TotalFlow Intelligent Marketing Solutions, a suite of services that enable print service providers to offer their business customers personalized marketing services. These services span a broad array of channels – including print, email, Web pages, microsites, social media – from a single integrated platform.

For example, Ricoh TotalFlow Intelligent Marketing Solutions enable print service providers to create a customized Web-based storefront for each business customer. The storefront gives business users an intuitive platform from which to conduct powerful yet cost-effective integrated marketing campaigns. The solution streamlines business customers' marketing operations by automating their ordering, processes, production and management of marketing assets, templates and finished products.

Ricoh TotalFlow Intelligent Marketing Solutions are the latest example of Ricoh’s Business Information Solutions approach, which tailors custom solutions to clients’ most urgent business challenges.

“Print service providers are working harder than ever with margins that are only getting slimmer,” said Dominic Pontrelli, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Ricoh Americas Corporation. “If they want to thrive and expand their business, they need to evolve their role from just printing on paper to becoming full-service providers of marketing services across all the media their business customers

RICOH AMERICAS CORPORATION www.ricoh-usa.com
70 Valley Stream Parkway, Malvern, PA 19355 Phone: 610-296-8000

are using today. Print service providers are well-positioned for this work given the close relationships they have with their customers, the customer content assets they already use – and now with Ricoh TotalFlow Intelligent Marketing Solutions – an entire service package at their disposal.”

Everyone benefits

Business customers can use Web storefronts to store logos, collateral, signage, promotional items, fulfillment kits and more. They can create and launch 1-to-1 mail/email marketing campaigns, integrate online and offline campaigns with QR codes and create promotional materials such as branded T-shirts.

In addition to serving the business customer, Ricoh TotalFlow Intelligent Marketing Solutions streamline operations for the print service provider, enabling new efficiency, accuracy, productivity and revenue. The solution provides budget forecasting data, real-time estimates on print costs, workflow tracking for every job and much more.

Ricoh TotalFlow Intelligent Marketing Solutions start with an analysis of the print service provider’s operation and specific needs. Solutions can be built on easy-to-deploy scalable software-as-a- service (SaaS) technology. The storefronts are accessible via any browser any time. Mobile users can manage campaigns remotely using smartphones or tablets. These and related solutions are built on Ricoh production printers such as the RICOH Pro C901+ Graphic Arts Edition production printer and software from key Premier partners such as PTI Marketing Technologies, EFI, Rochester Software Associates and Objectif Lune.

Customers such as Virginia-based Graphics and Marketing are already benefitting from the solution. Read the full case study here: http://goo.gl/WEZHK.