Ricoh Selects Zuora to Accelerate the Global Expansion of its New Digital Workplace Productivity Solutions

San Mateo, Calif., Tokyo, Japan –  March 8, 2019 Zuora, Inc. (NYSE: ZUO), the leading cloud-based subscription management platform provider, today announced that Ricoh, the $20 billion USD global workplace technology company, has selected Zuora to help advance its digital transformation initiatives and to continually improve the customer experience. The Zuora® platform will power and manage all financial processes for Ricoh’s first subscription-based printing and document workflow service.

 

“Leveraging the subscription business model changes how our customers interact with and continually receive value from our devices. This is a fundamental shift and we are excited to partner with Zuora to expand the Ricoh Smart Integration B2B cloud platform,” said Yasuyuki Nomizu, Corporate Vice President, Ricoh. “We chose Zuora because of their proven track record in powering subscription-based business models, which is required to launch our new Dynamic Workplace Intelligence approach to the market.”

 

First movers who embrace the increasing momentum of digitization can turn it into a competitive advantage. McKinsey & Company “found that the three-year revenue growth (of over 12 percent) for the fleetest was nearly twice that of companies playing it safe with average reactions to digital competition”

 

Ricoh’s new approach increases workplace efficiency and lowers the barrier to entry for small and medium-sized businesses. Incorporating a cloud platform into the RICOH IM Series takes the company’s best-of-breed multifunction printers (MFPs) and adds a cloud-based document workflow platform to enhance it, empowering digital workplaces and giving their customers access to sophisticated equipment to help them work smarter.

 

The new RICOH IM Series leverages artificial intelligence while digitizing various documents that occur daily in business transactions and in-house operations including ordering, invoicing, printing, mailing, to make these workflow processes and transactions paperless.

 

“With Ricoh Smart Integration, we have integrated a range of applications provided by partners in addition to Ricoh’s own application suite. Customers are able to utilize the latest release of cloud services based on a subscription model to reform their business,” said Kazuhiro Horiba, head of the RSI Office in Platform Management Center of Ricoh’s Platform Management Group. “At Ricoh, as well as meeting the needs of each individual customer down to the last detail using the Zuora platform, we want to further strengthen our already strong integrated device business at a global level.”

 

The traditional product economy has a standard set of linear processes that often break in the Subscription Economy. With Ricoh’s new subscription offering, their order-to-revenue process becomes much more complex, with customer renewals; suspensions; mid-cycle upgrades or add-ons; and cancellations. Typically managed by the ERP systems of product-first companies like Ricoh, pricing and packaging changes like freemiums, upgrades, downgrades or add-ons are impossible to test and launch.

 

Ricoh plans to use the Zuora platform to help the company achieve the following business goals:

  • Minimize a reliance on legacy ERP systems – Ricoh will use Zuora to manage the financial processes required to digitize difficult business processes. The Zuora platform will enable Ricoh to parse transactions into billable options – by user, type of workflow – the capabilities Ricoh’s ERP system was difficult to support.
  • A single global infrastructure for the subscription business – The Zuora platform will manage service menus, service packaging, and other processes for the services/ workflow provided by Ricoh Smart Integration. It will work as the global infrastructure ensuring scalability and the ability to handle different currencies, commercial practices, and payment methods around the world. While providing new value to corporate customers in Japan, North America, South America, Europe, and Asia through Ricoh’s IM Series, it enables powerful subscription business management at a global level.
  • Faster go-to-market with new digital services – With one global infrastructure to support the Ricoh Smart Integration platform, Ricoh will be able to add new services or applications more quickly than ever before as it builds its digital business. The Zuora Billing platform allows easy handling of future function expansions and cross-selling, up-selling, and delivers the speed and agility demanded of a subscription–based business.

 

About Ricoh

Ricoh is empowering digital workplaces using innovative technologies and services enabling individuals to work smarter. For more than 80 years, Ricoh has been driving innovation and is a leading provider of document management solutions, IT services, commercial and industrial printing, digital cameras, and industrial systems. Headquartered in Tokyo, Ricoh Group operates in approximately 200 countries and regions. In the financial year ended March 2018, Ricoh Group had worldwide sales of 2,063 billion yen (approx. 19.4 billion USD). For further information, please visit www.ricoh.com.

 

About Zuora, Inc.

Zuora provides the leading cloud-based subscription management platform that functions as a system of record for subscription businesses across all industries. Powering the Subscription Economy®, the Zuora® platform was architected specifically for dynamic, recurring subscription business models and acts as an intelligent subscription management hub that automates and orchestrates the entire subscription order-to-cash process, including billing and revenue recognition. Zuora serves more than 1,000 companies around the world, including Box, Komatsu, Rogers, Schneider Electric, Xplornet and Zendesk. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Zuora also operates offices in Atlanta, Boston, Denver, San Francisco, London, Paris, Beijing, Sydney, Chennai and Tokyo. To learn more about the Zuora platform, please visit zuorainternprd.wpengine.com.

 

Press Contact

Jayne Gonzalez

press@zuora.com

408-348-1087

 

© 2019 Zuora, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Zuora, Subscription Economy, Powering the Subscription Economy are trademarks or registered trademarks of Zuora, Inc. Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. Nothing in this press release should be construed to the contrary, or as an approval, endorsement or sponsorship by any third parties of Zuora, Inc. or any aspect of this press release.

March 7, 2019