About RICOH ProcessDirector print workflow software

Whether your focus is on high-volume critical communications in a continuous feed environment or marketing communications produced via sheet-fed workflows, throughout your print production operations you are capturing, manipulating and managing information. RICOH ProcessDirector helps you do this more efficiently and accurately, so you can meet your objectives for tracking and compliance, workflow automation, postal optimization, output management, and multi-channel information delivery.

Modular, scalable print workflow management software, RICOH ProcessDirector provides control over processes and print devices from multiple vendors via a web-based dashboard. It integrates with composition software, inserters and other systems with industry-standard password management and LDAP/AD integration.

Improve throughput, increase utilization of equipment and reduce costs

Disparate systems can make hitting deadlines difficult. Manual effort is required to close gaps when systems cannot share information, driving up labor costs and negatively impacting service-level agreements.

• View and control jobs and output devices using a centralized web-based system with an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI).
• Obtain the highest level of integrity in a “touch-and-toss” environment, where users can discard damaged pieces without concern because the software identifies which pieces are missing, resubmits them for printing and reconciles every job.
• Save time by expanding the ability to work with fully composed PDF files, using rules-based processing, such as inserting different images for each customer or choosing premium paper for selected pages on select clients’ statements.
• Automatically process PDF jobs with a mixture of simplex and duplex sheets without incurring click charges for blank sides.

Achieve output integrity and satisfy reporting requirements

Compliance penalties are a serious source of concern for businesses dealing with critical communications delivery. RICOH ProcessDirector tracks documents to help achieve 100% integrity from receipt to delivery.

• Easily generate piece level audit trail of production history.
• Verify that every piece is produced accurately using either network-capable inserters or barcode scanners and automate reprinting of damaged or missing pieces.
• Collect and store job, device, and document properties throughout the workflow.
• Store production history alongside the input and output print files for long-term storage, retrieval, reprinting and online viewing.
• Use data from RICOH ProcessDirector to create reports using commercially available business intelligence tools for capacity planning, production optimization and problem determination.
• Research the production history of individual documents to respond to queries or audit requests.
• Configure user access rights to control system usage.

Eliminate human errors and reduce costs by automating manual tasks

RICOH ProcessDirector helps teams manage deadlines by automating workflow processes and providing visibility into every job from receipt to delivery.

• Easily build workflows using a drag-and-drop workflow builder interface.
• Specify finishing, media and duplex instructions to sheet-fed or continuous feed printers when work is scheduled or change them on the fly.
• Comply with last-minute requests to pull certain documents from production without going back to the source application.
• Create a full audit trail, including manually deleted jobs.
• Eliminate costly, inefficient preprinted forms, allowing the reduction of storage costs and manual workflows by enabling the merging of electronic forms with variable data in one printing pass — requiring white paper only.
• Integrate with other systems via web services.
• Automatically reprint mail pieces damaged during insertion.

Streamline mail handling to lower costs

RICOH ProcessDirector helps minimize mailing costs by reducing human touchpoints and working to maximize postal discounts.

• Qualify for the highest postal discounts by presorting mail electronically before it’s printed.
• Perform postal cleansing to update document addresses in Adobe PDF ^®
• Combine documents for the same recipient into a single mail piece.
• Pool documents with like properties to commingle and achieve optimal postage rates.
• Use business rules to keep mail pieces within a less expensive weight class.

Manage personalized, multi-channel communications

RICOH ProcessDirector helps you deliver individual documents via a customer’s channel of choice by integrating their delivery preferences into production workflows.

• Allow your customers access to their PDF or AFP documents by integrating access to the archive from your website.
• Reduce your reliance on other departments and IT with an integrated multi-channel delivery solution, even for fully composed jobs — no need to touch applications which may be behind client firewalls.
• Be more responsive to customers’ channel preferences by applying changes after composition in the workflow.
• Send email directly from RICOH ProcessDirector or through your bulk email provider.

Reconfigure your production print workflow software anytime

No matter where you begin with RICOH ProcessDirector, you can add new capabilities as you grow or easily tailor what you have to accommodate changing workflow or compliance requirements. To augment the standard and optional features, our professional services team can deliver feature extensions or customized capabilities.

Engage workflow experts

When you want your team to focus on core business issues, bring in Ricoh Consulting and Professional Services experts to help you design, implement and integrate a RICOH ProcessDirector solution utilizing a rich array of product features assembled from the many implementations already in production around the world. You can save time and minimize disruption — even in the most complicated environments — because our experts have “been there, done that” with critical communications, output management, tracking and compliance, workflow automation, postal optimization and multi-channel delivery.

Add AFP job- and document-level controls, as well as the AFP Indexer feature, which identifies document boundaries within an AFP job without having to make changes to the source application that creates the job.

Manage and manipulate data with industry-leading transforms.

Print jobs on plain paper using electronic forms to avoid costs associated with preprinted forms, including management, storage and manual workflows.

Track jobs based on expected durations for actual workflow steps. See when jobs are at risk of missing their SLAs with color coding.

Create efficient production jobs by combining documents together from multiple jobs or documents that have the same attributes into mail pieces.

Achieve postage savings through extraction of address information for third-party software address-cleansing, optimized sorting and manifesting.

Configure inserters as part of a workflow system to automate reprint management, track individual mail pieces, create and manage a materials library, and combine multiple components into a single mail piece.

Scan unique barcodes on individual mail pieces to track items throughout production and automatically generate reprints for damaged or missing pieces.

Insert, modify or delete text, images and barcodes without having to modify applications that created the AFP.

Archive jobs as a step in the workflow and use the search options to find a job, view it, reprint it or take other actions. Store the production history of each document, which simplifies research and audit-ready reporting.

Keep production environments running while performing online backups to prevent lost work.

Call REST and SOAP web services from your production workflows to exchange data with third-party applications, including leading composition tools.

Integrate the online storefront and web-to-print functions of MarcomCentral into your production workflows.

Automate the reporting of production information, calculate production costs, manage inventory and more by integrating with the Avanti Slingshot MIS solution.

Integrate the powerful imposition functions of Ultimate Impostrip into your production workflows effortlessly.

Integrate preflight operations that use Enfocus PitStop Server into your production workflows for PDF print jobs.

Use an API to access archived data to present in your own application or company website. Allow customer service reps to find individual customer documents and reprint them.