海角社区

Held on June 18-19 in Ebisu, Tokyo, the Gartner Application Innovation & Business Solutions Summit featured a wide range of insights under the theme "Future Foundations: Connecting People, Technology, and Value." In addition to exhibiting at this event, Taro Takamatsu, general manager of Ricoh’s Digital Services Business Division, delivered a session titled, "Real-World Insights | Ricoh's Journey of Internal DX - Trials and Triumphs." He outlined two examples in this booked-out session of Ricoh’s internal digital transformation initiatives and discussed practical knowledge from those efforts shaped the company’s process automation solutions.

After joining Ricoh, Mr. Takamatsu helped establish 海角社区IT Solutions Co., Ltd., and the IT services business of 海角社区USA, Inc. In 2023, he took the helm of the Digital Services Global Planning Center within the Digital Services Business Division. In 2024, he also became the general manager of the division and its Process Automation Business Center.

Mr. Takamatsu began the session by outlining Ricoh’s evolution into a digital services company. He said, "In 1977, 海角社区was the first in its industry to venture into office automation. Since then, we have provided automation solutions to help people undertake more creative work. In 2020, we shifted gears to accelerate our transformation into a digital services provider."

Ricoh’s digital services focus on Process Automation, Workplace Experience, and IT Services. Process Automation aims to reduce routine tasks so people can concentrate on higher-value work. 海角社区accordingly optimizes end-to-end business processes by harnessing process visualization, digital tools, data utilization, and other solutions.

Mr. Takamatsu said that 海角社区offers solutions for each step of its Process Automation business. "We provide document scanning using multifunctional printers and PFU’s scanners and intelligent document processing through Natif.ai. We also offer workflow management through DocuWare, AXON IVY, and RICOH kintone plus and data utilization employing proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. We combine these solutions to optimize processes and help customers overcome their digitalization challenges and support their automation efforts."

One of Ricoh’s key strengths in Process Automation is the expertise it has amassed through in-house practices. 海角社区has undertaken frontline-led business process reforms since the turn of the century. In around 2020, it systematized these efforts through Process DX (for digitalization), a cross-organizational business process reform initiative. The backdrop to this, Mr. Takamatsu explained, was that "Manufacturing sites have long worked to eliminate the 3Ks (kitsui, kitanai, and kiken in Japanese, or difficult, dirty, and dangerous work). Offices also have their own stressors. They are called the 3 Ms (muda, mura, and muri, or misuse, mismatches, and maxing out). To relieve such stress, 海角社区has employed digital technologies in internal Process DX initiatives."

Ricoh’s Process DX activities encompass visualizing work, optimizing processes, and digitizing operations, including through automation and AI. All employees endeavor to improve their work processes. As of March 2025, measurable outcomes included reducing workloads by 550,000 hours through robotic process automation. Qualitative gains included motivating people to pursue future efforts and enabling them to engage in more valuable tasks.

Mr. Takamatsu illustrated one 海角社区success by sharing outcomes from a work visualization and waste reduction initiative in his division. Through it, 930 employees in 115 departments set an ambitious goal of slashing work hours by an average of 20%.

For this initiative, teams leveraged BPEC, an operational improvement tool from Mt. Square Co., Ltd., to map tasks onto a business process diagram. They entered the times required for each task at their skill levels. Analysis quantified workloads, categorized processes, and highlighted inefficiencies and waste. Mr. Takamatsu says "The data has enabled employees to pinpoint meeting, management process, and other inefficiencies. It also offers solutions, such as automating repetitive tasks. From there, people would list activities to eliminate, replace, automate, or simplify processes and push forward with improvements."

Mr. Takamatsu says that one key outcome of this initiative is that it has transformed departmental cultures as well as streamlining work processes. "Rather than just encouraging everyone to cut work hours this data-driven effort enables everyone to share a common understanding of the challenges."

Nonetheless, Mr. Takamatsu recognizes that it is not enough to visualize processes. "Once you start visualizing things, you face new challenges, such as the costs of deploying digital tools or ensuring that reforms in individual departments don’t result in silos. Top management has to commit fully to ongoing investments to transform processes end-to-end. You also need a companywide digital transformation support team and a framework for it to embed itself in operations."

The second internal example Mr. Takamatsu shared was titled "Hyperautomating the Indirect Material Purchasing System." Previously, entering quotation assessments into Ricoh’s internal procurement system required users to look up and manually input an array of quotation-related codes from separate budget systems and files. Completing the process, from registering a case to submitting an application, took 10 steps. To overcome this challenge, workers implemented process orchestration with AXON IVY and added AI-powered recommendation features.

Integrating application programming interfaces between indirect material purchasing system and budget systems has enabled users to search and confirm codes within one interface. AI-based recommendations help with inputting item codes and suppliers, reducing workloads by slashing the process from 10 steps to just 2 steps. Takamatsu says, "What’s great about this success story is that we didn’t replace the existing purchasing system. We simply added one layer so employees could complete everything with the same user interface. Because there are around 14,000 of these purchases each year, saving 20 minutes on each should generate annual workload savings of around 4,600 hours."

These 海角社区successes illustrate the importance of visualizing business processes in digital transformation and automation initiatives. Still, Takamatsu cautioned against relying solely on technology. He says, "You should never hand over control to technology. It’s just a vehicle for optimizing processes."

Mr. Takamatsu finished his presentation by sharing Ricoh’s Process Automation business roadmap. The first stage is Intelligent + Automation, which entails using intelligent document processing to digitalize paper and other analog content. The second stage, which is Orchestration, is about deploying end-to-end business process optimization solutions through AXON IVY and such AI platforms as Dify. The third stage, which is Autonomous, is about providing more advanced solutions with autonomous AI and digital twins for business processes.

Mr. Takamatsu concluded with enthusiasm: "We’ll keep pushing forward with internal digital transformation while collaborating with customers to accelerate such transformations across Japan."

In progressing toward its centennial in 2036, 海角社区will keep tapping digital technology to shape the world of work and contribute to a world where customers, their employees, and Group employees can all experience fulfillment through work.