London - Ricoh shared expert insights on the changing commercial and enterprise print, direct mail and publishing environments during a series of events at its European Customer Experience Centre (CEC) in Telford, UK 

Overall, the different sector-themed events, held under the ‘Open New Worlds’ banner, were attended by more than 300 operations from across the EMEA print and communications landscape.

Future opportunities were highlighted by leading external consultants and Ricoh specialists.

This included:

  - Ralf Schl?zer, Director, On Demand Printing and Publishing Services, InfoTrends consultants, who explained how commercial printers can add synergistic capabilities to     their existing businesses.

  - British direct marketing thought leader Brian Thomas, who highlighted renewed interest in direct mail supported by Royal Mail data reporting an increased Return On       Investment - to ￡3.22 for every ￡1 spent. 

  - Mike Levaggi, of publisher Harper Collins, who explained change is evolutionary. The future, he predicted, is global thinking, reduced inventory, and e-publishing for some   new authors.  

  - Ulf Sunnberg of North Bridge Consultancy, who said the challenge for in house corporate print operations is proving value, providing a more relevant offer and being   proactive.

Benoit Chatelard, Vice President, Production Printing, Ricoh Europe, says, “Print production has changed dramatically. For print service providers, brand marketeers, agencies and publishers, identifying the most successful approach requires greater understanding and collaboration, whether that is for a book, leaflet, bill or direct mail campaign. There is a world of exciting new application opportunities that progressive operations can tap into. The CEC enables these challenges and opportunities to be addressed creatively.”

Ricoh experts presented the latest technology updates and provided advice and recommendations.

Among the attendees was Manfred Sattler, Digital Print Manager at Schmidbauer Druckerei GmbH, Austria, who said “We are working on a direct mail campaign concept so we were keen to learn more about Ricoh’s data cleansing service /data.mill.” Paul Hepburn, Paramount Printers, UK, who said: “We wanted to learn more about our digital opportunities and what advantages they can bring to our direct mail clients.  Ricoh offers considerable innovation which we feel they’ll find beneficial and exciting.”