Case Study: VISOgraphic Inc

Expanded Ricoh digital infrastructure addresses shifting market demand for print services provider

About VISOgraphic Inc

VISOgraphic Inc, based in Addison, Illinois, was founded in 1979 and has grown to serve a diverse customer base ranging from SMBs to large Fortune 500 corporations. Over the years, the companies VISOgraphic serves have grown more sophisticated in their brand standards and methods of gathering personalization data on their own customers. To best serve its customers, the company believes in continuous reinvestment in its business and the technology that drives it.

"Ricoh has developed the next generation of an extremely robust digital press. We are able to run the machine for extended cycles and we can leave it completely unmanned."
John Dahlke
Chief Operating Officer
VISOgraphic Inc

Challenge

Equipped solely with offset presses, VISOgraphic Inc was feeling the strain of accommodating its growing demand for smaller, shorter runs. Job set-up and make-ready were time consuming and requests for variable data printing (VDP) were on the rise. VISOgraphic decided to test the waters of digital printing and shift jobs such as business cards to two RICOH Pro C901 production printers. Along with the printers, VISOgraphic wanted web-to-print portals to drive the digital business. As its digital business took off, VISOgraphic Inc was ready for next-level digital technology to enhance its capabilities and production.

Solution

As demand began to soar for color digital production printing, VISOgraphic needed an even more robust digital press. Once again, they turned to their trusted partner Ricoh to make that happen.

With Ricoh's guidance, VISOgraphic upgraded to the RICOH Pro C9110--an affordable, heavy-duty production color digital printer that offers powerful performance on all levels: productivity, durability, media support and image quality. The C9110 production printer delivers:

Near offset quality digital printing
An extremely solid feeding and delivery system
Option to add extra drawers
Automatic duplexing
Ability to run a wide variety of substrates, from linens to felt stocks
Long sheet capabilities
Ability to meet aggressive, short-run turnaround times

With this new production printer, VISOgraphic's color digital volume increased dramatically and nine months later, they installed a second Pro C9110 unit. An intuitive and powerful EFI Digital StoreFront® web-to-print solution was integrated with the Ricoh digital presses to give customers round-the-clock access to print services and a customizable branding experience. VISOgraphic also purchased a RICOH Pro 8120e production printer to simplify production tasks for its high volume of black-and-white applications.

Result

VISOgraphic now has the flexibility to offer new capabilities to its customers, with highly automated production printing technology that allows them to push more work through their plant. Complex variable data printing has expanded, with hundreds of jobs a month now fully variable. More than 50 web portals are in place, giving customers online access to their own personalized ordering and fulfillment system. Hybrid work has also been moved from an offset press to the Pro 8120 production printer with no drop off in quality.

"I wanted reliability. I wanted ease of operation. I wanted to be able to run these machines and not have my technicians come back to me every hour with issues. These new presses deliver because they simply run reliably, consistently and without headaches," said John Dahlke, COO of VISOgraphic Inc.

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