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Got this is an email yesterday, sorry for the delay but I was out fishing!!



Letter to Ricoh Dealers from CEO Explaining Elimination of President/CEO Position

Over the past two years, we have made significant strides in integrating and aligning the Ricoh Americas organization. Today, I am announcing a change in the leadership structure to further align the RAC and Ricoh U.S. organizations.

After careful review, the decision has been made to eliminate the position of President and CEO, Ricoh U.S., and to align the U.S. sales and operational leadership under my direction. As a result of this decision, Jeff Hickling will be leaving the organization. Jeff will continue in his role through July 15 to facilitate a smooth transition of U.S. sales and operations functions.

I want to thank Jeff for his leadership with both the IKON and Ricoh organizations over the past six years. Jeff began his career as the Senior Vice President of Operations for IKON where he drove the creation of functionally aligned process improvement teams that led to IKON's successful Oracle implementation. Throughout his tenure, Jeff established a strong metric-driven culture to drive significant improvements with back office functionality. He also showed ongoing commitment to the field organization with frequent sales roundtables, executive sponsorship with key customers and the creation of "Voice of the Field" Council. Since Ricoh's acquisition of IKON, Jeff has been instrumental in building an effective integrated leadership team in the U.S. and has had a positive impact with our dealer community by building stronger collaborative relationships and increasing market share across all channels.

Please join me in thanking Jeff for his many contributions to IKON and Ricoh which will benefit us as we move forward, and wish him continued success in his future endeavors.

Thank you,
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Prior to the July fourth holiday weekend, it seems Jeff Hickling, President and CEO of Ricoh U.S. found his position was to be eliminated. Sources within the company that wish to remain anonymous have told us that Hickling is out. This has been confirmed with a letter from Kevin Togashi, Chairman and CEO of Ricoh Americas Corp. that was forwarded to us. For now, Kevin Togashi, Chairman and CEO of Ricoh Americas will direct the U.S. sales and operations.



While working hard to build Ricoh as a global presence, Hickling spearheaded efforts to coordinate their Global Managed Document Services (MDS). A $300 million three year investment into their MDS infrastructure, global competency centers in Japan, Europe and North America and over 2,000 managed services sites would seem like a great start to a major endeavor such as this. However,

go here for the rest of the blog from IA
This is probably the best article I have ever read concerning the reality at Ricoh:

http://industryanalysts.com/IA...esident_%26_CEO.html

It is such an accurate depiction of the situation since IKON took over the reigns at Ricoh.

The only item that I disagree with is that the Dealer channel is only about 12% of Ricoh's total revenue (as opposed to the 20% mentioned in the article).

The comparison to how current leadership at Konica Minolta is steadily growing revenue and becoming the new trustworthy partner for Independent Dealers across the country is very interesting, yet must be alarming for Ricoh Company LTD. in Tokyo, Japan.

Some people have stated that Jeff Hickling was Ricoh's last hope, even though he would never be accepted by the Dealer community (nor will the next IKON guy if that is the direction Ricoh is headed).

It is becoming clear that not only is the Ricoh ship still taking on water, but that no one is currently steering this vessel.

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