Global
Ricoh's Initiatives
Matteo Punzina joined Npo Sistemi, a company within the Ricoh Group, in September 2020, before moving to the data operations team two years later. Since April 2025, Matteo has been part of the Data Center of Excellence, where he is a senior data analyst working across a range of sectors, from analytics to data engineering and curating the end-to-end deployment of analytical solutions.
Matteo was born and continues to reside in the northern Italian city of Monza. As a member of the inaugural cohort at the Ricoh Digital & Service Academy, he has completed the Ricoh Europe Data & AI Specialist program. This program, introduced in 2022, aims to advance the Data to Action framework and foster continuous learning and data skill enhancement throughout the organization.
Estimated reading time: 5 min
The major focus of all the courses I have taken so far has been on data and AI, but I have also used the platform for data and analytics, which are the key parts of my job.
I would agree because in this new digital world, the key is to have continuous learning and the continuous scaling-up of employees. For me, this is very much one of the reasons that I enjoy my job. Ricoh gives me the possibility to pursue continuous learning - great in this challenging new world of data - and to be certified and ahead of the curve in terms of content, new technologies and so on.
The pilot program was first mentioned to me by my manager at the time. He shared with me an outline of the content and I was immediately really interested and wanted to enrol. As it was the pilot program, we went through some initial testing stages to identify capabilities and then there was a series of courses. From that, we moved on to some real hands-on experience in areas like data analytic solutions, where we had to see a project through from scratch. The certifications were provided by external organizations such as Microsoft and IBM, and were not formal pass/fail exams at the end of the program. Instead, the topics covered in the L&D courses supported the learning required for these role-based certifications.
Before I started, I think I had two expectations. The first was to get as much as I could out of the learning experience, to update myself on all the latest technologies and to refresh my understanding of some of those that I might not use every day. Secondly, this was the first project when I had the chance to work with different people from all across Ricoh Europe, so I felt it would be a way for me to connect with them and for them to meet me. These were people in similar positions to me and with the same interests in the data environment, so it was a good opportunity to connect, to share and potentially to collaborate again in the future.
I would say that I more than satisfied my hopes before I started the courses and, at the
end, I had more tools in my
kit and a lot more connections with my colleagues. I like to push myself in the analytics culture and I know that
I
invested my time wisely.
One of the courses involved a real-world business situation and we had to find a solution in a limited period of
time,
or at least to have an explanation about how we would get on the right path to a solution. This was a group
project
and it was very interesting to me to see how people I had never worked with before approached the problem. They
had
similar job roles to my own and different types of experience, so they were able to bring different approaches. I
learned from them and they learned from me and now I can use that knowledge in my day-to-day work.
I’ve had to think about this quite hard because I do not want to use a common word. So the word I want to use is “engaging,” because there are so many different stages to the courses, each one is different and I had to read up quickly between one phase and the next one. There was never a chance to get bored as it was challenging. That is something that I really appreciated.
I have focused on studying the world of data, which is always evolving very quickly, and so some of the topics on the course were quite new. I would say that the skill I have been able to use in my daily working life is developing a critical approach to a question or a business problem where sometimes you know a little about it and not the full context. There are situations where you have to discover the full context, and that is something we developed during the hands-on phase. In one case, the scenario was a financial reconciliation across different models and that is far removed from what I usually have to do, so I had to do some lateral thinking to find the solution. And now I am finding that I am using that sort of lateral thinking in my work.
On the technical side the learning has been quite specific, but more generally there are some real-world lessons as well. Right now, every time I open a newspaper or watch the news, the term “AI” is always there. I think it can be quite overwhelming sometimes. I needed some good definitions and lessons to better understand what AI means for us. And yes, now I feel better informed on AI outside of my workplace.
Yes, and I have already done that. I knew that some of my colleagues were interested in upskilling themselves and learning more to help them in their jobs, so I have already recommended to them that they take courses.
Yes, if there are
new
programs that will give me new skills, give me new tools, as they did with the other courses, then I would
definitely
get involved.
The data world is changing rapidly and it seems that every month there is something new out there that I have to
learn
about. It would be a very powerful skill to know and understand all these new developments and technologies.
I see continuous learning as a synonym for evolution; you learn, you are informed and you understand. The world and our day-to-day work are evolving and it is very important for me to do the same. I also must learn and grow my knowledge to evolve my ways of thinking and my career. These courses are fundamental to that learning path.
