Ricoh Accelerates Move into Document Services

Yesterday, with great fanfare, Ricoh Company, Ltd. announced plans to invest $300 million over three years in its global Managed Document Services (MDS) infrastructure. The press conference, which took place simultaneously in Tokyo, London and New York, stressed that Ricoh was aggressively accelerating its shift to a services business model as a key growth strategy.

On its site, Ricoh (http://www.ricoh.com/mds) defines Managed Print Services as "the effective governance of your output environment. This involves the monitoring, controlling and improvement of your output technology as well as processes related to document management."

Though Ricoh's goals of decreasing document-related expenses, reducing waste and making organizations "greener" are all admirable, they are also areas that should be high on the agenda of every in-plant. What Ricoh (and others before it) is trying to accomplish by offering "Managed Print Services" is something in-plants should already be doing, if they want to be seen as valuable to their parent organizations. Look for ways to cut printing costs (particularly office printing) at your organization and take the leading in helping your organization create a document management strategy.