Earlier this year, late January to be exact, Ricoh issued a press release to announce that it would be investing $300 million (US) to develop its “managed print services” business.
Now, Ricoh has issued another press release, this one to announce Ricoh MDS 2.0.
Both press releases are included in this post; the most recent one is immediately below; the second press release appears after the first press release.
I’m getting more confused each day!
MPS?
MDS?
FM?
MPS is “managed print services”.
MDS is “managed document solutions”.
FM is “facilities management” (for reprographics)
Are these terms interchangeable; are the different acronyms simple marketing-speak?
TOKYO, Oct. 27, 2011 – Ricoh Company, Ltd., a worldwide leader in digital office equipment and advanced document management solutions and services, today announced Ricoh Managed Document Services™ (Ricoh MDS) 2.0, born from an in-depth analysis of customer engagements and focused on measurable results.
MDS 2.0 represents significant early progress in the evolution of the services-led business model Ricoh unveiled in January 2011, as it made a three-year commitment to enhance its global MDS infrastructure. The strategy shift was intended to leverage the power of improved document workflows and document management so that customers can concentrate on their business goals and bottom lines.
As part of Ricoh MDS 2.0, Ricoh today unveiled a new global website that serves as a source of information and guidance to help customers achieve their business goals through Ricoh Managed Document Services. The site includes case studies, white papers and videos, delivering this content via a customized user experience.
Defining the Ricoh MDS challenge Through its global MDS engagements, Ricoh has scrutinized thousands of projects and pinpointed customers’ top business concerns in managed print services (MPS), which is the foundation of “Ricoh MDS, MPS and Beyond™.” These concerns have yielded a new Ricoh MDS delivery structure focused tightly on producing desired outcomes in these areas.
The top identified concerns are cost control, environmental sustainability, information security and governance, business process efficiency, organizational change management, information worker (iWorker) productivity, information optimization and strategic infrastructure. Ricoh MDS 2.0 defines the services and deliverables that map directly to each concern to help customers achieve measurable and sustainable business outcomes.
“We applied our expertise and sharpened our focus on what customers need, even when they can’t articulate their requirements in so many words,” said Sergio Kato, Associate Director of Ricoh Company, Ltd. and General Manager of Global MDS Center. “Our refined service delivery methodology is designed to better help customers meet their business objectives while retaining the flexibility they need to overcome their unique challenges.” Ricoh MDS Adaptive Model Using these new insights, Ricoh has streamlined its delivery framework, producing a new, simpler five-phased Adaptive Model. With the customer at the center, the first phase – Understand – begins with an expert assessment of the customer’s “current state.” The Improve phase includes the design of a “desired state.” The Transform phase focuses on deployment, the Govern phase ensures all objectives are met, and the Optimize phase addresses ongoing improvements and sustained savings.
The new model strengthens the three stages of partnership engagement: Project Management led by PMI®- and PRINCE2®-certified Ricoh project managers who follow globally accepted best practices to track, manage and measure each engagement; Service Management led by ITIL®/ISO 20000-1-certified professionals who ensure the newly transformed environment is effectively governed and optimized; and Organizational Change Management, which accelerates the transition from the current to the desired state, and makes productivity gains a permanent part of the culture. This new framework creates a globally cohesive approach to executing MDS programs based entirely on the ways Ricoh customers prefer to do business. Refinements are already paying dividends: since April, Ricoh has signed more than 10 global customers, including one that operates in more than 70 countries.
New sustainability services Leveraging Ricoh’s rich history of environmental stewardship, including being named one of the “Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World”1 for seven years in a row, Ricoh has evolved its MDS service portfolio by introducing a comprehensive set of end-to-end sustainability services. These offerings can be combined in different ways to address the unique needs of Ricoh MDS customers across the globe. They include:
analysis and definition of the baseline carbon footprint from electricity and paper consumption;
creation of an optimization design with measurable reduction targets;
implementation of the design along with education and training;
governance and monitoring of sustainability performance to identify and action any gaps between actual performance and defined targets; and
guidance for balancing any remaining and unavoidable carbon footprint (EU market only).
“We’re detecting a deepening demand among our customers for sustainability, which has become an integral part of a business’s brand as well as an ethical imperative,” said Ike Kakegawa, Vice President, Environmental Sustainability, Ricoh Americas Corporation. “As we have demonstrated for years, sustainability is squarely in our domain: documents, records and electronic information have significant implications for a company’s environmental performance on a number of levels. Further, reducing our customers’ environmental footprint is an integral part of Ricoh’s strategy to achieve our social responsibility goals.”
Ricoh has delivered custom MDS solutions to customers around the world. For customer success stories on Ricoh’s MDS approach, please visit mds.ricoh.com.
Okay, here’s the Press Release that was issued by Ricoh in late January 2011 about its upcoming major investment in “Managed Print Services”:
Ricoh Investing $300 Million in Managed-Print Services
Ricoh plans to challenge HP and Xerox in managed-print services by investing $300 million during the next three years in new technologies, IT infrastructure and salespeople.
NEW YORK – Ricoh is looking to bolster its managed-print-services division with a three-year, $300 million investment aimed at adding more employees to its U.S. operation and bolstering the company’s IT infrastructure. The announcement comes as Hewlett-Packard and Xerox also look to offer more print services to their customers.
Ricoh announced its plans to invest in its MDS (Managed Document Services) business at several different gatherings, which all happened Jan. 20. In addition, the company and IDC announced new research to show how companies with annual revenues of $250 million could save about $6 million with more effective document management.
In addition to expanding its sales footprint in the United States, Ricoh plans to offer customers new cloud-based software that can manage a wide range of copiers and printers, as well as document management, said Jeffrey Hickling, the president and CEO of Ricoh U.S.
"We see ourselves as a key partner to the CIO, and we offer our guidance and support," said Hickling. "We also look at a company’s people, its processes and technologies in order to optimize each element."
Ricoh, best known as a traditional supplier of printers and copying machines, is not alone in trying to expand beyond a hardware supplier. HP, which continues to dominate the printing market, is offering customers print services and document management, while making it easier to print even more material from BlackBerry devices and the Apple iPad.
Xerox is also moving in this direction and offering more IT services. In a way, the entire tech industry is moving toward a more services-first model that stems from the success of IBM Global Services. Oracle, HP, Dell and even Intel are also moving in this direction.
Between 2010 and 2014, the managed-printing-services market is expected to grow about 38 percent, according to the research IDC presented.
Ricoh has been looking to expand its own business in the past several years through a series of acquisitions. One of the largest involved buying IBM’s Printing Systems Division. More recently, Ricoh bought Ikon Office Solutions, which greatly expanded the company’s MDS division. The Ikon acquisition is also allowing Ricoh to offer cloud-based management of a company’s printer fleet.
At the Ricoh meeting here, the IDC data showed that printed documents are still a significant source of information for most employees and even as the world goes digital, people are still printing documents.
In addition, as workers become even more mobile—and technological advancements allow them to print from their mobile devices—new challenges come up. Security issues arise as employees are allowed to take documents from businesses, thanks to the ever-expanding amount of memory that smartphones and tablets offer. It also creates an issue when printing documents to machines that may or may not be within the office.
This is one of several reasons Ricoh’s Hickling made the pitch for a managed-services model that looks at the company’s entire printing and document infrastructure.
"We are studying end-users’ behavior and asking what they are printing and how they are filing and how they are sharing information," said Hickling.
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