Ricoh Australia Increases Productivity by 40% and Wins Client Trust with Enhanced Project Management

Headquartered in Sydney, Ricoh Australia has a network of sales, service and support centers throughout the country. Ricoh is a brand trusted by some of Australia’s largest corporations, government departments and relied on in thousands of Australia’s small and medium businesses. More information is available at www.ricoh.com.au.

Per the above-noted development and growth, Ricoh’s professional services division needed to function as an effective, efficient conduit between its customers and their business. However, in order to achieve this critical objective – and earn its customers’ trust– Ricoh had to overcome several key project management-related challenges, including:

• Delivering impressive customer presentations that inspired confidence
• Avoiding information overload and collaboration breakdowns
• Maintaining control as projects grew longer, more complex and involved more people
• Avoiding momentum-killing meetings, which were also causing resource shortages
• Reducing excessive manual overhead and administration
• Improving visibility and transparency, so that teams could rely on reliable data – instead of old meeting minutes and memory

As Debbie Collins, the PMO Manager for Ricoh Australia’s Professional Services Division, reflected: “We needed a better way to close the gap between our internal business partners and customers”.

Ricoh selected AdaptiveWork after it was showcased by a partner in Latin America. Says Collins: “We were really impressed. The partner was in a similar industry, and was using AdaptiveWork to overcome many of the collaboration and project management challenges we were facing”.

Collins and her team implemented AdaptiveWork in stages over a 5-month period, starting with a pilot group and then gradually adding cross-functioning teams. Ongoing user feedback and support from AdaptiveWork’s Customer Success team resulted in what Collins calls a “really solid plan and system for our go live”. During the structured implementation process, Ricoh also created education and training documentation for both its internal teams and customers.

Since implementing AdaptiveWork, Ricoh continues to enjoy significant benefits, including the ability to win new business by impressing customers and inspiring them with confidence. Says Collins: “Now when we deliver a presentation, our customers immediately see that we have control of the situation for them. We have roadmaps, milestones, due dates, resources that can be adjusted on the fly, plans for next steps, and so on. AdaptiveWork also allows us to demonstrate visibility and transparency, which builds trust and a strong relationship. It opens up a whole new world of confidence from the very start.”

Other results include:

• 40% increase in productivity by eliminating redundancy and dramatically reducing administration overhead
• A stronger brand and reputation that is driving professional services influence, growth and revenues
• Significantly improved resource management and utilization
• Streamlined day-to-day project and schedule management
• Effective and empowered high-performance teams. Says Collins: “The added visibility and transparency has inspired my team to work harder and smarter, and feel good about themselves at the end of the day”
• Efficient and “fast-tracked” internal meetings, and more engaging and informative customer meetings (AdaptiveWork is used in all customer meetings)
• Immediate access to documents, notes, emails, posts, and other project information
• Currently, Ricoh has approximately 125 staff and customers using AdaptiveWork, with more on-boarding every month – which Collins feels is “fantastic and exciting”.