Ricoh Launches New Aficio MFPs With App2Me Solution

Art Post (Guest)

Ricoh Launches New Aficio MFPs With App2Me Solution

January 27. 2010 - Ricoh Americas is launching the latest additions to its monochrome Aficio family, the Aficio MP 4001/MP 5001 Series, which it rates at 40 and 50 ppm respectively, and incorporate monochrome network print and copy and color scan. The two new MFPs are also among the first to support App2Me, a new tool for customizing documents and streamlining workflow.

The App2Me solution on the Aficio MP 4001/MP 5001 Series enables users to create customized workflows and execute them wherever they go. Users can download widgets to any client (desktop, laptop or Smartphone) and use them on any Ricoh MFP enabled with App2Me, without having to configure anything on the MFP. App2Me simplifies complex workflows with widgets that can be created to combine, distribute, edit and create documents, as well as perform other tasks automatically. Users can create specialized widgets for virtually any need, in any framework across the multiple platforms that App2Me supports, such as Google Desktop.

The systems also include Ricoh's Personal Paperless Document Manager (PPDM) software. PPDM allows users to capture, combine, convert and share paper, PDF and Microsoft Office files securely, as well as making document distribution easier by sending paper and electronic files to virtually any destination, including e-mail, FTP sites, Web Folders Microsoft SharePoint and content-management systems. It also allows users to transform paper originals into fully editable Microsoft Office files, PDFs or fillable forms that can then be electronically completed and revised. With PPDM, users can also extract data from fillable forms and import into a .csv file for analysis, as well as create Bates Stamps used in the legal profession. OCR software is included for converting files into editable text files.

The Aficio MP 4001/MP 5001's network scanning is in color or monochrome, and includes scan to: e-mail (supports up to five LDAP servers), folder, hard drive and URL site. The touch screen provides full-color thumbnails of scanned images so that users can make sure originals have been scanned correctly.

1/27/107:22 PM

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Art Post (Guest)

Would like to hear everyones thoughts on the new "app2me" gadgets. Is this more sizzle than steak?

1/27/107:23 PM

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DeanwMaven VIP

I have been playing with app2me recently and can see some advanatages like when a mobile worker goes office to office they won't have to install drivers to print. If they have app2me installed and we have app2me enabled they will be able to print easily.
I'm interested to see if anyone has taken this to market and how it has been recieved. Also at this time we include initial connectivity with the sale of our MFP products. I could see customers also wanted app2me manager installed on all laptops and I wouldn't want to have to do that for free increasing my labor time for no additional revenue.
Is anyone pushing app2me?
Any feedback would be interesting.

Thanks

6/22/112:28 PM

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txeagle24Maven

I've had customers say that it is "cool" and that they will install that on every PC instead of regular print drivers (what a nightmare that would be), but when it comes down to it, they just do what they are accustomed to. It would be much more useful if it would work w/ mobile Android/iPhone/Blackberry such as smartphones and tablets. Since it only works on Windows-based PC's, its usefulness is extremely limited.

6/22/113:59 PM

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JasonRMaven VIP

quote:
Originally posted by Deanw:
at this time we include initial connectivity with the sale of our MFP products.

Without limits? If you sold a 171 and the customer had 50 workstations, you would install the print driver (and then the fax driver) on every one of them?

My suggestion is to incorporate a reasonable limit to the installs. The customer needs to learn how to install the driver anyway since I doubt you would come back out in six months to install a driver on their new PC.

Five workstations per device seems to work well. That's enough to make sure everything is working and train the customer how to do it as well.

6/23/118:41 AM

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DeanwMaven VIP

We normally tell them 2 hour limit. I can't imagine a scenario with 50 workstations printing to a 171 but in that case we will install the drivers on server and share it out.
We have very few installs that exceed 2 hours.

6/23/119:38 AM

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JasonRMaven VIP

Long ago when digital was getting started and we didn't have a policy, we installed a machine similar to a 171 at a medium office. It was their first machine that could network fax, so they wanted us to install the fax driver on each workstation. I don't remember the exact number but it was around 40-50ish.

As far as installing drivers on the server vs. the workstation, that's something the customer decides. If they decide they don't want the driver on the server (or perhaps their server if offsite, or in the cloud), a policy isn't going to change that.

I think all of these ideas boil down to "what is the other guy willing to do?". Since if the other (copier) guy says they'll install 50 drivers, you might have to as well

6/24/118:27 AM

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Art Post (Guest)

Whenever possible, if the customer has a server. I state that we'll install on the server and then your IT person can share it out to others. If the answer is we don't have IT, then it's a billable project for us if they'd like us to do the job.

6/26/1110:41 PM

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