The OEM has revealed a new collaboration with cloud-based subscription management platform provider Zuora, which it hopes will “accelerate the global expansion of its new digital workplace productivity solutions.”
The Zuora platform will power and manage all financial processes for Ricoh’s first subscription-based printing and document workflow service as part of the deal, in an attempt to “continually improve the customer experience.”
“Leveraging the subscription business model changes how our customers interact with and continually receive value from our devices,” explained Yasuyuki Nomizu, Corporate Vice President, Ricoh. “This is a fundamental shift and we are excited to partner with Zuora to expand the Ricoh Smart Integration B2B cloud platform. We chose Zuora because of their proven track record in powering subscription-based business models, which is required to launch our new Dynamic Workplace Intelligence approach to the market.”
Ricoh’s new approach claims to “increase workplace efficiency” and “lower the barrier to entry for small and medium-sized businesses. Incorporating a cloud platform into the RICOH IM Series takes the company’s best-of-breed multifunction printers (MFPs) and adds a cloud-based document workflow platform to enhance it, empowering digital workplaces and giving customers access to sophisticated equipment to help them work smarter.”
The new RICOH IM Series also leverages artificial intelligence, while digitising various documents that occur daily in business transactions and in-house operations including ordering, invoicing, printing, mailing, to make these workflow processes and transactions paperless.
“With Ricoh Smart Integration, we have integrated a range of applications provided by partners in addition to Ricoh’s own application suite,” said Kazuhiro Horiba, head of the RSI Office in Platform Management Centre of Ricoh’s Platform Management Group. “Customers are able to utilise the latest release of cloud services based on a subscription model to reform their business. At Ricoh, as well as meeting the needs of each individual customer down to the last detail using the Zuora platform, we want to further strengthen our already strong integrated device business at a global level.”
The traditional product economy has a standard set of linear processes that often break in the Subscription Economy, according to Ricoh, which explains that its new subscription offering means order-to-revenue processes become “much more complex,” with customer renewals; suspensions; mid-cycle upgrades or add-ons; and cancellations. Typically managed by the ERP systems of product-first companies like Ricoh, pricing and packaging changes like freemiums, upgrades, downgrades or add-ons are impossible to test and launch.
Ricoh plans to use the Zuora platform to help the company minimise a reliance on legacy ERP systems, achieve a single global infrastructure for the subscription business, and achieve faster go-to-market with new digital services.
“The Zuora Billing platform allows easy handling of future function expansions and cross-selling, up-selling, and delivers the speed and agility demanded of a subscription–based business,” the company added.
