Pros
None really unless you like to work for a Large Corporation that is all about the Money and does not care about humans. Ricoh states they are eco-friendly, cares about the community, however most branches are far from the Image, Vision and Values of their Japan Corporation. Most every time (history shows every three to six years) that Ricoh¹ purchases another Company², Ricoh allows the failed company that Ricoh just bought to have control, usually downsizing and removing over half the staff. All which causes loss of revenue for Ricoh and client frustration as Ricoh employees are thrown into working with two processes until they get combined, causing chaos. Oh this was the pros category. Well it is a job. ¹Ricoh Business Solutions, Ricoh Americas, etc. Corporate currently as of writing is in NJ, has moved from CT, and GA. Regardless of where corporate branch is parent is Ricoh Japan. Ricoh as bought out an still manufactures under some of these names, Gestetner, Mita, Monroe, Savin, among others. Ricoh has bought out IKON, MindShift, and others. ²Ricoh is currently running under the last company bought, IKON Business Solutions.
Cons
The Family setting that were in the small corporations that Ricoh absorbed are gone, and will not return. Nor will the commitment and enthusiasm of the staff. Ricoh cares about the numbers only, money, money, and more money. The morale is so low at Ricoh. Tension in branches and uncertainty can be feel and seen. See Comments to Managers. Ricoh is a very large corporation, with the last few mergers, and to be at Ricoh you must stay in the ‘in crowd’. Your education does not matter, just kiss your managers butt, look and stay in the ‘In crowd’, and you are all set. Still Ricoh is not one for giving raises, and you must fight for your commissions, so get ready to show proof that the client paid Ricoh if you want your commissions. Some managers will state that the client did not pay or other, so you will not get paid, and now you’re in the position to call client to find out, which is against corporate policy. It takes a lot of money to keep all those managers employed, who are not making any money, just making wrong decisions. There is a lot of back stabbing that goes on internally at Ricoh and you do not know who you can trust. Everyone is just trying to keep their jobs at Ricoh, if you attempt to stand up for Ricoh clients or show Ricoh what is wrong, you are fired. I personally have seen this throughout Ricoh. Your supervisors will change as Ricoh constantly tries to understand why Ricoh losses so much money and restructures, which again is going on. As Ricoh attempts once again to combine databases, etc, to help fix the broken processes that never fixed before taking on the next company, in end creates more paper work for employees and longer wait times for clients to receive product, causing client over billed and others. Do not use Ricoh for their Enterprise Service Department. I would highly not letting Ricoh ESD, ‘copier techs’, or employees on your network, or letting anyone of them to remote into your PC and never your server. You are better off hiring a separate company to setup the Ricoh printer on your network to be secure, and correct. Most employees are not certified or have old certifications, as Ricoh does not give time to employees to get certifications or continuous education. Most copier techs do go to school on the copier, fax, of Ricoh products, however not certified to work on Dell, HP, etc workstations, laptops, servers, etc, causing the tech to have to ‘hack’ their way through. If you are already a client of Ricoh, observe the Techs behavior, if you feel they do not know what they are doing, you are probably correct and should stop them before they ‘hack’ their way to completion. Yep, their solution now works that you wanted it to, but now at what cost to your network security and bandwidth? They come in and just get the job done, not caring about security vulnerabilities that they caused. Ricoh’s employees have the attitude, ‘As long as it works’. It is hard to find anyone at Ricoh that cares about the client. It is hard as a person that has to deal with Ricoh’s clients that are mad because Ricoh keeps billing client over and over for something client has already paid, or the solution proposed does not work, copier has another issue….. and on and on. I feel sorry for all Ricoh employees that have to deal with the clients that Ricoh holds. Most Ricoh clients end up leaving at the end of contract, especially if it a Ricoh Network Contract. If you have a Ricoh network contract you will be disappointed if you expect Ricoh to do anything but take your money. You get a toll free number to call, however wait times are long, and Ricoh CORE or that is supposed to remote to fix issues, often cannot, and have to dispatch a tech. Yep, the tech(s) I was talking about above. Ricoh went from a service led organization to a sales led about 6 years ago now. A couple of years ago Ricoh announced to employees that Ricoh is going back to a service led organization. Unfortunately, still today, Ricoh is a sales led organization, which cares only about money. Talking to all different branches of Ricoh in different state and all employees are dissatisfied. Ricoh has client, employee surveys, however Ricoh does not listen to clients or colleges. Management warns employees not to give bad marks on surveys, or Ricoh Corp will force training. All departments fight for the money, leaving the clients waiting on what department is going to service them. Working with Ricoh will cost you more than Ricoh’s competition as each department has to add their money to project, even if they are not doing anything. This includes a Project manager that gets paid for not knowing what to manage and has no concept of the project at hand to manage. Even if Ricoh does bid lower than the competition, be very leery of why. The new management will blame projects not going well on client side, and want to do a change order to get more money from client. Project is already in progress so you will have not much of a choice to pay to continue for Ricoh to learn as they go, on your dime.