Ricoh included for the first time in the February 2021 Magic Quadrant for Managed Workplace Services, North America

Part of the Gartner analysis involves a review of the customer base. We were happy to share that we serve 20,000 managed workplace services customers with 155,000 service desk users. 

Clearly, numbers like those don’t happen overnight. Over the years, customers have provided valuable feedback. Much of it has helped to guide the development of our service desk, especially in the area of self-service automation, which continues to evolve at a rapid pace.

Service, however, hasn’t been the only element of our MWS program to receive recognition. To earn a spot in the 20 companies recognized by Gartner, you need a robust portfolio of services.

Winning industry awards helps to reinforce that you are providing value to your customers. Over the last year, several components of our managed workplace services have earned industry recognition.

• ChannelE2E Names Ricoh a 2021 Top Vertical Market MSP
• Ricoh Named a Best Cloud Hosting Provider for 2020-21 by Cloud Awards
• ChannelE2E Names Ricoh a 2020 Top 250 Public Cloud MSP
• CRN's 2020 Solutions Provider 500 List 
• 2020-2021 BLI PaceSetter Award Winner for Business Process Services

As the digital workplace has grown in popularity – or in 2020 out of urgent necessity – cloud and IT services and business process services become integral solutions for companies of every size. Our investment in those areas, especially in streamlining support and service delivery, continues to grow as managed services offerings gain popularity with organizations of every size. 

And today, the need for managed services is greater than ever before.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions came to market more than a decade ago. Adoption may have been slow at first, but ground-breaking platforms like Salesforce™ increased comfort with cloud applications. 

The introduction of the iPhone in 2007 also laid the foundation for comfort with cloud applications. Smartphone apps brought business tools to mobile devices, and cloud computing suddenly offered a significant productivity advantage over traditional local software installations.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), taking costly physical infrastructure from a capital expenditure and converting it to an operating expense – became a trend. Soon, there was talk of Everything-as-a-Service (EaaS). 

EaaS may not be here yet, but as companies seek ways to streamline and increase their agility, managed services offer a way for businesses of all sizes to offload time-consuming tasks and costly infrastructure and regain time to focus on revenue-focused core competencies.

The journey toward the managed workplace began years ago. Top companies that lead in that area likewise began building their operations and offerings years ago. 

Today, we are seeing the trend and need for Managed Workplace Services is greater than ever before. To be recognized by Gartner for the first time reminds us that though aligned with market demand, the opportunity to serve our customers remains as great as ever.

Gartner defines their Magic Quadrant as follows:

“Gartner Magic Quadrants offer visual snapshots, in-depth analyses and actionable advice that provide insight into a market's direction, maturity and participants. Magic Quadrants compare vendors based on Gartner's standard criteria and methodology. Each report comes with a Magic Quadrant graphic that depicts a market using a two-dimensional matrix that evaluates vendors based on their Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute.”²

The Gartner Magic Quadrant is simply an analysis tool. Gartner does not endorse, recommend, or promote any of the companies included in their analysis.

We’ve been working with businesses to produce, store, share, and protect their information for more than 80 years. A lot has changed in that time and our offerings have likewise evolved to help our customers solve the biggest challenges impacting how they create, share, and store information.

A main feature of Managed Workplace Services may be managed print and IT services, but today MWS extends far beyond print and IT support. Today, our customers have access to end-to-end managed solutions for content, workflow, automation, and more. And that includes post-sale automation to streamline customer support and speed service response. 

Key highlights of our MWS offerings include:

• Service automation. We can’t stress enough how important post-sale response is to ensure your business stays up-and-running. Our service automation continues to introduce new features to enhance self-service, answer questions more quickly, and maximize uptime.

• Scalability. Our customers enjoy access to services, applications, and more that doesn’t require a heavy infrastructure investment. Need access to a data capture software? Subscription solutions like our Intelligent Business Platform (IBP) make the technology available as a service, allowing your business to get exactly the services you need, when you need them. Looking for a mail service solution? You can find it on IBP and scale to your current need. 

• Cloud solutions. Bring your people together wherever they are working with leading cloud services and solutions to streamline your workflows and digital processes. Cybersecurity solutions like RansomCare add a layer of ransomware protection, without adding to your IT infrastructure, giving you added security without adding more work for your IT team.

These are only a few of the ways we’ve evolved our MWS offering. You can find more, along with insights and tips on how to keep in growth mode and stay competitive, at https://www.ricoh-usa.com/en/solutions/digital-workplace.

Managed Workplace Services isn’t a passing trend. As businesses aim to be more agile, especially in light of the challenges presented by the pandemic, managed service offerings will continue to grow and expand in both availability – and engagement by organizations of all sizes and types.

In our view, we see the services growing around four areas of the digital workplace: remote workers, Cloud and IT infrastructure, process automation, and ensuring a smart and safe workplace.

We further expect to see:

•  Increased consumerization of business services. This consumerization will put price pressures on applications and services. We also expect to see changes in the delivery of both applications and services into a subscription model like our Intelligent Business Platform, providing businesses flexibility in both contract and use of a solution.

• Standardization of managed services outsourcing. As businesses aim to focus on core competencies and push ahead in their areas of expertise, we expect non-core functions will be outsourced and become standard operating practice. This outsourcing will make enterprises more agile to compete with up-and-coming SMBs while it will give SMBs access to enterprise-level solutions and services.

• A greater focus on customer experience and employee engagement. Customer experience efforts will center around quicker response and service delivery to meet ever-evolving expectations created by digital tools. Employee engagement will focus on keeping people connected in remote and hybrid workplaces to ensure safety and also attract top talent.

Managed Workplace Services promises to provide the tools, services, analytics, and support needed to deliver exceptional customer service by keeping employees productive, connected, and secured.