TWIR " This Week in Ricoh"

Ricoh’s factory direct branches, Ricoh Business Solutions, in an effort to promote sales of its workgroup color laser MFPs, is apparently now offering to pay the first two payments of a customer’s lease of selected models.

Ricoh is also promoting its “@Remote” appliance, which gathers meters from its MFPs, to report to Ricoh service department, among other features. The Ricoh branches in some cases will sell these devices to customers for $1.00, if they agree to allow it to monitor at least 5 devices on the network.

Ricoh announced that it plans on providing a beta version of “Quanp” to user in U.S., after launching in Japan only. The new website offers:
- could storage service
- name is short for quantum paper
- billed as a new visual online storage service
- allows end user an online sport for collecting and organizing photos
- uses a Windows client with a 3d interface

IKON, a division of Ricoh, is now shipping the embedded version of EFI DocSend. Details:
- The original DocSend, also known as EFI SendMe, was an external device, much like
the eCopy ScanStation
- IKON was selling $10 to $20 million of external DocSend’s per year
- IKON claims it sold 100 each of the DocSends connected to the relabeled Konica Minolta production print systems (which it no longer carries after the acquisition by Ricoh)
- Works currently only with Ricoh MFPs that have ESO (Java-based Embedded Software Architecture)
- Actual OCR function performed on the DocSend software loaded on customer’s server
- Scan to e-mail and scan to folder come standard
- Does not come with Scan to Me (that comes with external version)
- Is not currently compatible with the 80 application connectors that are available for external version
- Connectors that are available are EMC Documentum, EFI Digital StoreFront, Open Text Captaris RightFax, Alchemy Westbrook Fortis for $1080 each
- Later this year, it will launch connectors for Microsoft SharePoint and Ricoh Document Mall
- LDAP and Windows authentication are supported
- File formats supported are searchable PDF, Word and Excel
- Thumbnails displayed on copier control panel
- Image despeckle and deskew are standard
- OCR engine used is Nuance OmniPage
- Base MSRP of $1710 for service license for one MFP
- $1440 for an additional MFP
- $6750 for 5 MFPs
- $12,150 for ten MFPs
- $18,000 for 20 MFPs

-=Good Selling=-