Part of the reason Ricoh Italia gets such praise from its people lies in their training. The first thing you see when you enter its offices in Cernusco Sul Naviglio near Milan is the Ricoh Training Academy.

Ricoh takes care of its dealers too, and this is evident in the excellent service they provide to customers. The company’s work has resulted in its being awarded the ISO-9000 social responsibility certificate for its synergies and cooperation in the area of Total Quality Management with its sister companies NRG and Lanier (3M).

At its core, Ricoh is an office supply company. It produces copiers, fax machines, printers, scanners and duplicators as well as multifunction machines and digital cameras. Maintaining an advantage in such an ultra-competitive sector, Kato explains: “Quite often personalization and customization are what are needed to satisfy the demands of our customers. I tell our sales staff: ‘Don’t even show the product until you ask what the problem is first and try to come up with a solution’.”

Taking care of customers this way has brought tangible results. In one of the company’s biggest deals, Ricoh Italia installed 15,000 units of network multifunction printers in more than 14,000 Italian Post offices throughout the country.