Inkjet & Digital Printing

Ricoh Corporation Announces Print Copy Scan Director: Upgrade to Its Popular Print Director Software

Friday 12. June 2009 - PCS Director 6 Offers New Features to Better Manage and Track Printing, Copying, Scanning, and Faxing Usage to Reduce Total Cost of Ownership

Ricoh Americas Corporation, the leading provider of digital office equipment, today announced the release of Print Copy Scan (PCS) Director 6 to customers through its partnership with Print Audit, a leading provider of print tracking and copy auditing solutions. PCS Director 6 represents a major revision release and name change from Ricoh’s current Print Director 5 solution, originally released in 2006. With this upgrade, customers are able to reduce environmental impact, as well as costs, through tools that manage printing and copying activity, report charge-backs, and identify the cost of printing across entire organizations. Included with PCS Director 6 is a data migration tool for easy upgrade from Print Director 5 for current customers, as well as new analysis, rules and recovery features for greater flexibility and ease-of-use.

With PCS Director 6, users will find an updated features set which allow for better tracking. Not only can PCS Director 6 now track color jobs, as well as black & white at the page level, it can also track multiple page sizes in jobs. Enhanced pricing options and new pricing levels now make it possible for copy, scan and plot jobs to each have its own cost per page, while specifying pricing at multiple levels.

PCS Director 6 offers new analysis features such as a revamped reporting engine which makes graphical reports more visually appealing. With improved reporting groups, users and printers can belong to multiple groups for reporting purposes, allowing for streamlined reporting and data sharing. These features also help save time as Job Manager and Analysis Reporting reports can now be scheduled to automatically email multiple users at a specified interval, allowing for automated and simplified data analysis or customer billing.

Formerly known as the Reduction module, the new Rules module features virtually unlimited rule combinations. Customers are able to reduce their costs with one set of rules that focus on re-directing large jobs away from desktop devices, while at the same time combining rules that support green initiatives such as forcing black & white or duplex printing from email applications. PCS Director 6 also provides new rules to address security initiatives based on the name of the document, either by tracking jobs and notifying a security administrator with the details of that job, or by disallowing the job all together. Users are also able to utilize additional recovery features such as declining balances which can now be set based on cost, total pages, color pages and total black & white pages.

“PCS Director provides customers the advanced tools they need to drive their environmental and security initiatives, while at the same time reducing their total cost of ownership,” said Ron Potesky, senior vice president, Corporate Communications, Product/Solutions & Channel Marketing, Ricoh Americas Corporation. “Ricoh is committed to providing true value to our customers and is pleased to announce the immediate availability of the PCS Director 6 product.”

Ricoh will also be releasing upgrades to the embedded Java version of PCS Director, which is compatible with all Ricoh Multifunction Products (MFP) that support the Ricoh External Charge Unit firmware. The embedded solution will feature an improved user interface by allowing quicker access through an information button added to the Client Custom Fields screen; restrictions support on the machine level; and setting limits to restrict copying/printing/scanning/faxing for certain criteria.