Pictured above: Ricoh’s Henryk Kraszewski demonstrated the new Pro 8420S mono printer about to be released in Australia at the renovated showroom in North Ryde
Ricoh Australia has opened its new experience centre in North Ryde, Sydney.
Officially opening the centre this week, Ricoh Australia managing director Yasu Takahashi said the redeveloped site is inspired by the three principles formulated by Ricoh founder Kiyoshi Ichimura in 1946.
“The customer experience centre is inspired by our corporate principles, known as ‘the spirit of the three loves’ – love your neighbour, love your country, and love your work. The three loves encourage us to continuously improve and contribute to the wellbeing of all stakeholders,” said Takahashi.
“These principles reenforce the belief that great people in a great environment makes work fulfilling and fun.”
Takahashi said the centre aims to enhance both the customer and employee experience following the pandemic and subsequent years of hybrid and remote working.
“As an organisation, Ricoh has been adapting to hybrid working, and the challenges and opportunities that people are facing from this hybrid workplace environment. While we’re still in the middle of the journey, we have seen significant accomplishments so far,” he said.
“When it came to renewing this lease last year, it was a hard decision to make because we were uncertain about the future of work. Are we moving to five days in the office or going 100 per cent remote?
“I came back to the basics in mind every time, how do you create an environment that enhances both employees’ and customers’ experience at the same time. I finally made the decision that instead of moving somewhere else or going 100 per cent remote, to convert this space into more of a connection hub between our employees and customers.
“In order to achieve this, we needed to rethink several key aspects including how are team members working today. COVID proved that people can work remotely. Therefore, we needed to have a reason for people coming back.
“I personally feel that COVID also accelerated the advancement of technology. We needed to make the best environment where people could interact with those technologies and fully utilise the benefits of them.”
Takahashi said the company also examined what would be important to customers.
“What does this environment mean to our customers? What does Ricoh mean to our customers? That was another piece that we really spent time thinking about,” he said.
“And lastly, how we can demonstrate the value we can bring to [customers] now and in the future. Not only talking about today but what are the future technologies that we can bring, and how we can continuously demonstrate those new technologies.”
Takahashi said the Ricoh customer experience centre it is an interactive space that enables the company to showcase its comprehensive suite of products.
“We’re not just only a print technology company, we also have a vast range of divisional services, such as IT, hybrid workplace solutions, digital automation, and security,” he added.
“We have a wide range of offerings today. This space is about showcasing those comprehensive solutions and service. It also serves as a place to be a collaborative environment between Ricoh, the vendors, and our customers.”
Henryk Kraszewski, senior product and marketing manager, told Sprinter the concept behind the new experience centre is to showcase the broader capabilities of Ricoh Australia.
“What we have on display here now is not only our production showroom – where we encourage our customers to come in and test our equipment – but at the same time demonstrate the rest of our capabilities across our whole business,” Kraszewski said.
“We are showcasing other offerings such as concept of hybrid working and how it can best work in many environments. We also have our large AV integration operation – we’re the third largest AV integrator in the world – and we can showcase how that technology can help printers connect to their customers, but also to satellite operations.
“Cyber security is another big topic at the moment and many printers don’t have the capabilities to do this in-house, we can help them with their cyber security challenges and manage that for them. We can also help with IT infrastructure, even down to the level of purchasing computers for customers and getting them ready for their staff to use.
“The way we have designed the experience centre is for it to be used by our customers, so we are encouraging our customers to use these facilities. If they have a town hall, or a meeting and they want to bring their workforce together, they are more than welcome to come here.
“We have the capability to not only host it in-house, but if they have operations across the country, we can stream it, they also can have access to a board room, and workstations so staff can work remotely while they’re away from their own office.”
Attendees also enjoyed a guest keynote speech from Artificial Intelligence specialist Dr Sean Gallagher titled ’The Future of Human Work’ discussing the future impact of Generative AI to individuals and teams within the workplace.
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