Print Service Provider Makes First Foray into Color Inkjet with Ricoh

ICS Corporation is a leader in marketing and distribution services for print and mail clients nationwide. Since 1965, the company has continued to grow and expand its efforts from local businesses, to financial services and non-profit sectors. “These days, more and more customers are demanding color capabilities, and we simply could not continue missing out on their color business,” says Tom Rippert, Director of Print Operations, ICS Corporation. “We knew we wanted to grow our digital color capabilities, but we didn’t want to break the bank doing it, either.”

Rippert and ICS Corporation knew that by adding color and greater direct mail capabilities, they could bring in new business and take on more jobs with faster turnaround times.

ICS has taken the leap into color inkjet production printing by adding Ricoh’s (Booth 2022) InfoPrint 5000 continuous feed platforms and RICOH ProcessDirector workflow solution to its environment. The InfoPrint 5000 continuous feed platforms are designed to help users transition smoothly to inkjet, and offer scalability to continually protect customers’ investments. Both the InfoPrint 5000 GP and InfoPrint 5000 MP platforms print up to 420 feet fpm, the GP in monochrome and the MP in color. These models support multiple ink types, paper stocks, and file formats, along with support for process and spot colors and ICC-based color management.

RICOH ProcessDirector is scalable workflow software designed for efficiency, cost, and precision conscious printers using AFP or PDF data streams. It is both modular and robust, helping it fit the needs of specific environments at reasonable costs, centralizing workflow monitoring, and management to help drive efficiency, transparency, and reliability.

With these implementations, ICS continues to expand its footprint in the direct mail and marketing industries, and address changing customer needs by securing new color and variable data business opportunities, decreasing costs, and increasing efficiencies.

“Ricoh’s team worked closely with us to lower our operating costs, both by implementing affordable inkjet solutions, and by optimizing and automating our workflows with RICOH ProcessDirector,” says Rippert. “The combination of Ricoh’s people and technology delivered a win for us at ICS.”