Ricoh USA plans to lay off roughly 76 employees while closing a Central Florida call center, according to an Orlando Business Journal report. Those job cuts apparently will happen sometime in late January 2019 or sometime thereafter, the report says.
The layoffs will not affect any other locations, a Ricoh USA spokesman told the journal, and some employees at the call center will be offered positions in a Tucker, Georgia facility, the report said.
Ricoh Talent, Evolution
Although the job cuts represent less than 1 percent of Ricoh's worldwide staff, they reinforce ongoing challenges for the printer company and its core market focus. Earlier job cuts included:
- 150 positions eliminate at a call center in Houston, Houston Business Journal reported.
- Roughly 1,000 management positions in Europe and nearly 5,000 jobs in North America apparently were cut in early 2018.
- Ricoh USA cut roughly 5 percent of its staff in early 2017.
Ricoh's Joji Tokunaga
Ricoh Americas spent 2017 fine-tuning and enhancing its partner go-to-market strategy, and those efforts showed progress, Senior VP Glenn Laverty told ChannelE2E in a podcast recorded in December 2017 and published in early 2018.
The company in April 2018 named Joji Tokunaga as president and CEO of Ricoh in the Americas. At the time, the company said its customer loyalty index (CLI), a standardized tool that tracks customer loyalty over a period of time, had increased approximately four percent in the last 12 months. Additionally, dealer partner satisfaction has increased by 28 percentage points in two years., though actual figures were not released.
Ricoh also owns mindSHIFT, the well-known managed services provider. In the financial year ended March 2018, Ricoh Group had worldwide sales of US$19.4 billion, up from US$18.2 billion in 2017, according to the company's press releases.
Printer Company Layoffs: HP, Lexmark, Xerox
Multiple printer companies have cut jobs in recent years while attempting to diversify beyond CapEx hardware revenues into OpEx recurring revenue and services opportunities.
Printer company job cuts in 2018 have involved HP Inc., Lexmark and Xerox.
