Written by Paul Kunert
MicroScope.co.uk, 5 May 2009

Ricoh is making its first foray into the IT channel with a managed service, the only area of the printer market where analysts have forecast growth this year.

The Ricoh Click service allows customers to buy print at a fixed price per page depending on the volumes printed – hardware is bought separately – and the contracts from 6 to 60 months with 4, 6 or 8 hours service response times.

Richard Allison, Ricoh UK channel manager, said customers were demanding greater transparency of printing costs and showing more interest in services but the market was littered with opaque bundles.

“Many printer vendors are offering a managed service that includes leased hardware bundled with consumables, spare parts and maintenance paid over a quarterly rental, so the customer does not get clarity of what a page is costing them,” he said.

The billing, replenishment of supplies, service calls and maintenance included in the contract are handled by Ricoh, which has around 1,000 field engineers. “We take full ownership of the contract and pay the reseller 8% annuity,” he said.

The IT channel has been tapped up by various vendors to sell print as a service but Allison reckoned those schemes had been complicated, involved finance and did not clearly spell out the benefits.

The EMEA printer market declined 8.4% last year according to Gartner as the recession forced customers reduce hardware spending .

Tosh Prabhakar, senior analyst at Gartner, said businesses were continuing to slow upgrades and printer hardware sales would likely decline this year, steeply in the first half.

“Customers’ investments will be in document management software and services that help them cut costs,” he said, adding printer vendors needed to re-educate IT resellers to migrate from box shifting into services.

Services were changing the route to market for some printer resellers said James Kight, managing director at Printerland, but those from a copier background – where all devices are sold on a page per click basis – were a step ahead right now.