New Ricoh TotalFlow gives small to medium printers business-focused features

The new product, which will be available in South Africa at the end of October, automates a host of repetitive tasks and mobilises information from job creation through printing and finishing.

"Print service providers in this range have often been forced to over-invest in features they don't need," says Anthony Ho, manager of the product and solutions support division at Ricoh SA. "This focuses on their most important business objectives."

A three-part solution, it includes prep software for fast, accurate print setup, print manager to optimise printing efficiency and production manager for advanced print management capabilities.

Prep helps print service providers create print jobs, quickly combining multiple files of different formats into one printable PDF file. They can perform simple edits, select the right media and choose finishing options matched to each printer. Visual ticketing lets operators quickly check key details before printing.

Managing tasks

Print manager, which supports up to five printers, automates many previously manual tasks, including job ticketing, scheduling, reporting and finishing. The software prioritises important jobs and directs them to the devices that will deliver the best and most affordable results based on client needs. Providers can produce a variety of reports on printer usage and performance to help further optimise the operation.

Production manager offers advanced capabilities such as pre-flight integration, colour management integration, digital print load balancing and support for up to 10 printers. With print pooling, it determines which device offers the necessary availability, throughput and quality to complete the job most effectively.

Organisations can customise workflows using drag-and-drop icons for proofing, approval, PDF transformation and more. The software includes Postscript-to-PDF and PCL-to-PDF transforms to support legacy environments, and automatically compiles reports that can be analysed to gauge performance for every job.

Other features include: