Ricoh Extends Solutions Portfolio With Marketing Asset Management and Web-to-Print Offerings

BOULDER, CO--(Marketwire - Dec 13, 2011) - Ricoh*, a leading provider of digital output solutions, announced today that it is continuing to expand its enterprise marketing offerings with new Marketing Asset Management (MAM) and Web-to-Print solutions that enable organizations to deliver customized communications via multiple channels. Ricoh, with the help of strategic partners such as PTI [Printable Technologies, Inc.], will be bringing together new technologies, software and services to allow companies to drive relevant, multichannel marketing campaigns at the global, regional and local levels. A recent study from Gleanster, a market research and advisory services firm, revealed that highly relevant and targeted communications are significant revenue drivers in distributed marketing environments. This key finding further mandates the need for corporate marketing digital automation that enable local marketers the ability to adjust messages according to the unique market conditions while maintaining brand integrity. These findings support Ricoh's commitment to developing multichannel marketing tools that help organizations address this need.

Ricoh has long been committed to enabling companies to leverage leading marketing tools, such as Precision Marketing and data analytics, to deliver relevant and customized content that is more engaging and drives a higher Return on Marketing Investments (ROMI). Continuing to lead innovation in the industry, Ricoh is now extending that capability beyond the enterprise, making it easier to migrate commodity-driven print service providers from just one channel of print -- such as direct mail -- to a full spectrum of multichannel communications, driving value and growth for their businesses. Building on its strength in the production print industry, Ricoh's new Web-to-Print solutions can help companies optimize their production processes and realize the maximum benefit of variable data printing (VDP).

"In this economy, marketers are driving demand generation for their companies, making it imperative that their local marketing and sales teams are enabled to quickly respond to customers, leads and the community to drive measurable top line results. In many cases, commercial printers are the print fulfillment side for these campaigns. Our new solution will provide commercial printers the ability to deliver new services for their corporate marketing customers, driving new routes to revenue," said Lee Gallagher, director of Precision Marketing & Enablement for Ricoh Production Print Solutions (RPPS). "For example, with these offerings a company could print a variable direct mail piece, conduct an email campaign, integrate online and offline using QR code and drive key messages through new channels such as mobile applications and iPads. This is yet another value-added service commercial printers can now tout."

With PTI's new SaaS software, MarcomCentral, Ricoh will offer a cloud-based software solution that supports a multitude of output delivery formats for print and other media, including PDF, AFP and HTML email. This MAM solution is designed to enable enterprises to provide distributed agents, salespeople and others with access to brand-controlled collateral. The company also plans to enhance the offering with Precision Marketing and other value-added applications, services, training and template design capabilities as the offering continues to grow.

A new Gleansight report, "How Top Performers Drive Relevance and Revenue in Distributed Marketing Environments," found that top marketing performers are investing in initiatives that mitigate three key challenges: relevance, communication and campaign cycle time. The report also found that relevancy was directly related to revenue, regardless of the channel, but that print was a specific weakness for many marketers looking to maintain relevancy. Ricoh's portfolio enhancements help address this concern by enabling customers to leverage multiple channels of communication, including print, to optimize their results.

Gleanster and Ricoh also found that top performers in the study were three times more likely to leverage emerging technologies like Marketing Asset Management (MAM) solutions. These offerings help companies automate, distribute, track and manage marketing assets to make it easier on organizations that are going "glocal" -- moving a corporate asset down to the local level to distribute branded collateral. Locking down a brand can be crucial for some companies, but they must also give their distributed network the ability to reuse marketing assets in an effective and profitable localized way.

For a copy of the full Gleanster report, please visit: http://bit.ly/t9bWVF.

About Ricoh Production Print Solutions (RPPS):
Ricoh Production Print Solutions (RPPS) is a strategic business unit within the Ricoh Family Group of Companies focusing on delivering highly complex, data-driven hardware, software, solutions and services to enterprises of all sizes. Click here or visit the following sites to learn more: Twitter, Facebook, InfoPrint Insights blog, LinkedIn, YouTube, ADFSavings blog, ADFSavings Twitter.

*Ricoh as mentioned in this release refers to the overall Ricoh company brand which can include Ricoh Production Print Solutions, InfoPrint Solutions Company, Production Printing Business Group, Ricoh Americas Corporation, Ricoh Company, Ltd., and more at anytime.