Ricoh unveils iPad App designed to focus commercial printing profit

The Ricoh TotalFlow Production App is a business development tool that helps commercial printers increase sales of high-value services via iPad-driven marketing presentations that guide face-to-face selling.

The app also helps these businessesoperate more efficientlyby providingonline supplies ordering, service requests, user manuals, on-demand video training, and an up-to-the-minute media/substrate guide. All of these services, tailored within the app to the specific Ricoh production printer(s) a customer owns, can help sharply reduce costs.

Consider a customer eager to order 5,000 identical postcards promoting a new venture. That’s a low-margin, low-return campaign for the print/marketing services provider and the customer. Ricoh’s app helps foster the conversation between the PSP and the customer about the value of customized, and even multi-channel campaigns. The salesperson can use a presentation, video and white paper in the app to counsel the new client on the value and ROI associated with variable data printing (VDP), personalized images, QR Codes, personalized landing pages (pURLs) and more.

Maximizing uptime. A Ricoh Production Printer has reached the point of requiring preventative maintenance. The operator, using the Ricoh TotalFlow Production App, contacts Ricoh service and a call is placed. For those customers who take advantage of Ricoh’s Trained Customer Replacement Units (TCRU) program, the operator can click through a video tutorial of the parts replacement procedure right on the tablet, leading to increased uptime and printer availability.

Printing innovation. The owner of a chic new restaurant has a fresh graphic design concept for a menu. The commercial printing salesperson finds her an exotic new substrate from the iPad app’s Media Guide to complement the design. The customer is delighted with the suggestion, confident it will distinguish her business.

To help drive successful profit- and reputation-making scenarios like these, the Ricoh TotalFlow Production App aggregates a broad range of multimedia content, including original material available only through the app.

The Ricoh TotalFlow Production App is available for free to any registered member of the Ricoh Business Booster resource center, a value-add program available at no cost to any Ricoh production printer owner.

Ricoh will demo the Ricoh TotalFlow Production App next week at Graph Expo 2011, the largest graphic communications exhibition and educational conference, in Booth 2600. The conference runs Sept. 11-14, 2011, at McCormick Place South, Chicago. Theapp is available on the App Store.