20
de Juny
de
2016
Act.
20
de Juny
de
2016
Although the younger generations would no doubt wonder what they are and how they work, Spain is still the country in Europe that sells the most fax machines. It should come as no surprise, then, that Ricoh, the Japanese multinational technology firm that invented the first fax in 1983, should choose Spain, and specifically Sant Cugat del Vallès, to locate one of their subsidiaries with the largest international profile. Today, Ricoh Spain has more than 2,000 employees, a 1,000 of whom are in the HQ in Sant Cugat, the city where the company also has its Centre of Shared Services for southern Europe.
In 2015, the firm that specialises in office equipment, printing and document management had a turnover of 240 million euros in Spain, some 2.8% more than the previous year. Meanwhile, Ricoh's world sales amount to 2.2 billion yen (about 17.3 billion euros). "Eight years ago, our market fell by 40% and the volume of printed paper fell by 10%," recalls Xavier Fernández, director of Marketing, Communication and Distribution at Ricoh Spain, during a conference at the ESIC business school.
Ricoh's facilities in Sant Cugat del Vallès where 1,000 people are employed. Artur Ribera
Access to information
Ricoh is no longer about photocopying. "Ricoh's core business continues to be the printing market, but we have also opted for change and digital transformation," says Fernández. Thus, the photocopiers, which in Ricoh are called multifunctionals, became a hub, in the management of company information.
"In 2013, the great challenge was how to reduce the amount of paper in offices. Now the great challenge is how to access the information in the most comfortable, adequate and efficient way. In other words, how to make sure all employees have access to the information, how they want it and when they want it," says the marketing director.
In an interview with VIA Empresa in 2013, David Mills, director of operations at Ricoh, insisted that 84% of Spanish directors believed that doing away with paper documents would save them up to 20% a year. On the other hand, some 87% of companies were not prepared for this digitalisation of data. According to Fernández, "we have gone from digitalising documents to digitalising information."
Thus, Ricoh understands digitalisation as cross-based applications in which multifunctionality plays a very important role: "We offer a device with applications you can use to digitalise all of your documentation."
An example of this strategy is the incorporation of Captio, the mobile application that facilitates and centralises the management of expenses from trips or travel to and from work. Receipts from taxis, lunches, parking, hotels, fuel... all saved in digital form in the cloud. These are the applications that facilitate the digital transformation of SMEs, one of Ricoh's segments. "Once you have an Android platform, it opens up the world to you," says Fernández, who adds that "the future is taking us towards an environment in which the multifunctionals will be hyper-personalised with a wide-ranging application store."
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Xavier Fernández, director of Marketing, Communication and Distribution at Ricoh Spain. Artur Ribera
Innovation no longer (only) comes from Japan
Catalonia has become home to 80% of the Japanese companies that have decided to open industrial plants in Spain, as is the case of Honda, Yamaha, Hitachi, Rakuten and Ricoh. "When it was decided to open the Centre of Shared Services for southern Europe, the Sant Cugat HQ competed internally with other subsidiaries in Paris, Milan and Porto; the result was that we won because Barcelona is a very cosmopolitan city, with talent and is attractive to foreigners."
Ricoh's main R&D I centre is in Tokyo, where it has its central offices and "where there are 5,000 Japanese workers in white coats devoted to innovation; it is one of the advantages of working in a Japanese company." However, many of the digital transformation projects are born in the centre in Catalonia.
A sign of this dedication to innovation is the sponsorship of the Start Up Competition at Sónar D that took place this week, with the aim of boosting the development of innovative digital projects from startups, and the Start Up Garden, a space that has brought together 30 startups from around the world. "We are connected to different startup ecosystems and for us the relational marketing is very important," says the marketing director.
In 2015, the firm that specialises in office equipment, printing and document management had a turnover of 240 million euros in Spain, some 2.8% more than the previous year. Meanwhile, Ricoh's world sales amount to 2.2 billion yen (about 17.3 billion euros). "Eight years ago, our market fell by 40% and the volume of printed paper fell by 10%," recalls Xavier Fernández, director of Marketing, Communication and Distribution at Ricoh Spain, during a conference at the ESIC business school.
A lot has happened since Ricoh invented the first digital photocopier in 1987. This month, the company presented its first prototype 3D printer that allows for the manufacturing of single large pieces and the multiple production of parts in a single print run. According to Ramón Encinas, head of 3D printing at Ricoh Spain, "clients in the automotive sector are very enthusiastic about the capacity to generate polypropylene parts, as most of the plastic pieces in cars these days are made of this material."
Ricoh's facilities in Sant Cugat del Vallès where 1,000 people are employed. Artur Ribera
Access to information
Ricoh is no longer about photocopying. "Ricoh's core business continues to be the printing market, but we have also opted for change and digital transformation," says Fernández. Thus, the photocopiers, which in Ricoh are called multifunctionals, became a hub, in the management of company information.
"In 2013, the great challenge was how to reduce the amount of paper in offices. Now the great challenge is how to access the information in the most comfortable, adequate and efficient way. In other words, how to make sure all employees have access to the information, how they want it and when they want it," says the marketing director.
In an interview with VIA Empresa in 2013, David Mills, director of operations at Ricoh, insisted that 84% of Spanish directors believed that doing away with paper documents would save them up to 20% a year. On the other hand, some 87% of companies were not prepared for this digitalisation of data. According to Fernández, "we have gone from digitalising documents to digitalising information."
Thus, Ricoh understands digitalisation as cross-based applications in which multifunctionality plays a very important role: "We offer a device with applications you can use to digitalise all of your documentation."
An example of this strategy is the incorporation of Captio, the mobile application that facilitates and centralises the management of expenses from trips or travel to and from work. Receipts from taxis, lunches, parking, hotels, fuel... all saved in digital form in the cloud. These are the applications that facilitate the digital transformation of SMEs, one of Ricoh's segments. "Once you have an Android platform, it opens up the world to you," says Fernández, who adds that "the future is taking us towards an environment in which the multifunctionals will be hyper-personalised with a wide-ranging application store."
.
Xavier Fernández, director of Marketing, Communication and Distribution at Ricoh Spain. Artur Ribera
Innovation no longer (only) comes from Japan
Catalonia has become home to 80% of the Japanese companies that have decided to open industrial plants in Spain, as is the case of Honda, Yamaha, Hitachi, Rakuten and Ricoh. "When it was decided to open the Centre of Shared Services for southern Europe, the Sant Cugat HQ competed internally with other subsidiaries in Paris, Milan and Porto; the result was that we won because Barcelona is a very cosmopolitan city, with talent and is attractive to foreigners."
Ricoh's main R&D I centre is in Tokyo, where it has its central offices and "where there are 5,000 Japanese workers in white coats devoted to innovation; it is one of the advantages of working in a Japanese company." However, many of the digital transformation projects are born in the centre in Catalonia.
A sign of this dedication to innovation is the sponsorship of the Start Up Competition at Sónar D that took place this week, with the aim of boosting the development of innovative digital projects from startups, and the Start Up Garden, a space that has brought together 30 startups from around the world. "We are connected to different startup ecosystems and for us the relational marketing is very important," says the marketing director.