Ricoh Australia will absorb subsidiary company Lanier into its brand as it seeks to provide customers with consistency in product and service delivery worldwide.
The integration brings 300 staff and 8000 clients under the Ricoh banner and will commence once the sale of Lanier’s shares to Ricoh Australia by Ricoh Asia Pacific is completed and the Lanier corporate entity can be wound up.
Lanier was acquired by Ricoh in 2001 and is already fully integrated in other countries like the US, while running alongside the mail Ricoh brand elsewhere. Ricoh has already been providing Lanier’s backend operations, like warehousing and logistics, for some time.
[Related: More Ricoh news]
Ricoh Australia managing director Les Richardson says a major driver for the integration was that each company was concurrently developing workflow, document management and managed IT solutions, often with different suppliers.
“It’s best to consolidate those programmes, taking the best from each and develop it under one brand,” he says.
“We will unite our range of managed services and product offerings under the same brand, enabling us to provide even greater value to customers, right across the business technology landscape.
“We are taking two strong, profitable organisations and building a new, even stronger business in Australia.”
Richardson says the Lanier brand will be retained for dealers in regional areas to maintain their clients. He says simply rebranding them is often not an option because there are also Ricoh dealers in the same areas.
“Those dealers are doing very well so we don’t want to cut them off at the knees,” he says.
Richardson says the integration will inevitably lead to some operational consolidation and job losses, considering there is some duplication, but that the company has slowed down recruitment to allow natural attrition in preparation for this.
“We hope to redeploy most of them of them to minimise redundancies and it won’t happen until after June so we have time to work with our staff and prepare them,” he says.
Richardson says the integration has gone down well with Lanier customers and not much will change for them besides better and more consistent service. He says various communication programmes have been set up to keep them informed.
Comment below to have your say on this story.
If you have a news story or tip-off, get in touch at editorial@sprinter.com.au.
Sign up to the Sprinter newsletter
