At drupa 2016, Ricoh is unveiling the Ricoh TotalFlow Cloud Suite, a range of cloud-based solutions offered as Software-as-a-Service, expanding the portfolio of workflow solutions to support commercial print service providers and corporate enterprise clients.

The solutions that form TotalFlow Cloud Suite comprise: data cleansing, web-to-print, marketing asset management, cross media services, and workflow automation. TotalFlow Cloud Suite enhances the accessibility of key solutions to boost productivity and performance.

These carefully selected Ricoh software and third party Ricoh-endorsed solutions have undergone a due diligence exercise, with a particular focus on data security and compliance with applicable data protection standards.

These subscription-based services allow production printing businesses to select the software solutions they want to subscribe to without the upfront investment in an IT infrastructure to host them themselves. This also enables them to add new capabilities when demand dictates, allowing them to grow at their own pace, expanding their services in a responsive and measured way.

“Many print service providers are small to medium operations or family-run businesses where IT resources and expertise can be limited,” comments Benoit Chatelard, Vice President, Production Printing, Ricoh Europe. “But as more software solutions are being developed to streamline workflow, improve productivity and expand the services on offer, hosting and managing these can become challenging for the business. With TotalFlow Cloud Suite, Ricoh hosts its solutions and those of trusted third-party suppliers, removing the burden of IT support from small to mid-sized operations. Clients can then spend more time focusing on generating business and less time on managing their IT requirements. There is also no need to own and manage a server to run the software, which is another savings benefit. Larger businesses are increasingly adopting a cloud-based policy for their workflow applications and will also find TotalFlow CloudSuite a relevant and compelling option.”

While the flexibility of TotalFlow Cloud Suite allows print service providers to build a software toolkit that addresses their own requirements and best fits their business needs, it also ensures updates and enhancements made to the individual solutions are taken care of without the client having to make any alterations to their own operations. There is no need to factor in cost or time for software and server maintenance or upgrades. Further TotalFlow Cloud Suite minimises the inadvertent downtime that can be caused by human error in the execution of these processes.

“With TotalFlow Cloud Suite, print service providers can subscribe to a wide range of Ricoh and Ricoh-endorsed third-party solutions with easy access but without the burden of hosting these applications themselves,” Chatelard concludes. “Updates are performed externally, minimising operational downtime and intrusive on-site maintenance. Clients can also add services and test them without making upfront capital investments and avoid the risk of missing out on benefitting from solutions that can boost productivity and performance. This cloud-based approach to software solutions offers a truly modern, flexible, trusted way to invest in software capabilities and to keep operations on the leading edge of business and production workflow.”