The company strengthens its regional strategy.
Above: Ricoh’s current President and CEO Yoshinori Yamashita (left) and incoming President and CEO Akira Oyama.
Ricoh’s President and CEO, Yoshinori Yamashita, attended the 2023 New Year’s Party held by the Kansai area Ricoh dealer association in Osaka on January 12 and spoke about the focus areas for the 21st mid-term management plan that Ricoh will unveil in April. He revealed the company’s policy to review the relationship between the world’s regional sales companies and headquarters and to place importance on the voices of the regions.
Regarding the company’scurrent situation and policies, Yamashita stated, “Ricoh declared that it would transform into a digital service company three years ago. In 2023, we want to make it a year of accelerating change and realizing growth. Together with our dealers, we want to provide customers with what we have built up so far and grow. They often say it is an uncertain time, but it is not uncertain. It is a predictable future when we look back. However, we have not been able to keep up with the speed of the changes taking place.”
He added, “We are working with employees to foster self-directed talent that can move autonomously in order to become a digital-service company. We are also robotizing Ricoh’s 2036 business processes and adding wisdom with artificial intelligence (AI). We want to become a company that can be of service to create a society with the vision of ‘joy in working’ for 2036 (Ricoh’s 100th anniversary) by doing more creative work.”
Yamashita also discussed the specific measures that Ricoh will unveil in April, identifying three important points of focus for the next three-year mid-term management plan.
- Strengthening its regional strategy;
- Promoting the success of global personnel; and
- Improving the value of the products Ricoh offers.
“The strengthening of our regional strategy will be a major reform to immediately reverse the relationship between Ricoh headquarters, Ricoh Japan, Ricoh America in North America, and regional sales companies in Europe, Asia, and Central and South America,” noted Yamashita.
Under the conventional structure, Ricoh headquarters has development and supervisory functions, while regional sales companies are responsible for sales, service, and marketing in each region. For this purpose, expats from the headquarters were dispatched to each regional sales company.
Under the new mid-term management plan structure, each regional sales company will have its own planning and development functions and become a company that can create customer value close to each customer in each region. In North America, Ricoh America will take the lead in planning and development, and a system will be established to provide products and services that North American customers demand. While promoting global cooperation, each regional sales company will take advantage of customer needs for digital services to develop products that meet those needs.
Succession Plan
On January 30, Ricoh announced at its board of directors meeting that Akira Oyama, executive corporate officer, will assume the role of president and CEO on April 1. As CEO, Oyama will take the lead in executing product planning and development through the company’s global sales network, which was identified as a key area of focus by Yamashita. At the press conference announcing the change in leadership, Oyama stated that he would continue the reforms initiated by Yamashita.
When Yamashita became CEO in 2017, the company was facing financial difficulties and reported an operating loss of ¥115.6 billion for that fiscal year. Yamashita declared that he did not want to be bound by the conventional wisdom and past precedents of the Ricoh Group, and he laid out a vision for a new start with a growth strategy that included a “restart,” “challenge,” and “leap” every two years. He has since executed this vision.
Currently, Ricoh is in the stage of achieving the final goal of “Ricoh Leap” through its digital services business. The new mid-term plan starting in April 2023 is aimed at achieving this goal, and Oyama intends to firmly take on this baton.
