Ricoh Helps Siemens Drive Efficiency and Sustainability

This article appeared in October’14 issue of CIO Magazine.

Siemens, a world-class solution provider in the engineering and manufacturing segment, plays a keyrole in India’s quest for developing modern infrastructure. As a company, Siemens is committed to drive causes which maximize value and minimize costs. But that’s not always easy when the company operatesmore than 50 omore than 50 offices in 25 cities and has to assimilate additional people and infrastructure after strategic acquisitions.

Siemens, a Rs 12,000 crore company, was looking at scaling down its overall costs and managing core operations more effectively. Satish Kotgire, head IT infrastructure, Siemens, chose to strategically outsource non-core, yet vital areas of the company’s IT and business processes.

His team identified the opportunity to lower overhead costs in the company’s document and output management processes. “We anted to centralize our IT spending for printers, copiers, consumables, andproduction sites with the goal of reducing operational and aintenance costs. This would eventually improve our cost structures related to document output,” says Kotgire.

Siemens is also committed to a multi-faceted environmental sustainability plan consisting of staff education, a reduction of solid waste, and decreased energy consumption and greenhouse gases. Therefore, Kotgire and his team chose to implement a solution that could support Siemens’ environmental sustainability goals.

The task of managing equipment, printing and distribution, billing, reporting and meeting the needs of over 14,000 employees was daunting, and with no central means of managing overall costs. That’s why Siemens chose to partner with Ricoh. “We looked to Ricoh to leverage its expertise, experience and global presence to support us,” says Kotgire.

Kotgire began by establishing a baseline. “The first step was to make a thorough assessment of our office infrastructure. That revealed a surplus of under-utilized devices,” says Kotgire.

Kotgire’s team and Ricoh found that there was a need to manage nearly 700 devices. “This meant that we had 20 employees, on average, to each device. Approximately 26 percent of these devices were either out-of-date or malfunctioning, and were responsible for excessive print costs,” says Kotgire.

His team also discovered that there was a lack of asset management and cost control for printers, supplies, and the management of devices. Complicating the situation was the fact that Siemens had five or more vendors supplying print/copy services with varying consumables, support and billing. Ricoh recognized an opportunity to optimize, rationalize and provide standard technology platformsto Siemens’ office environment after a thorough study.

Kotgire decided to implement a centralized program to shrink the company’s total annual document output costs. A large portion ofSiemens’ output fleet was replaced with Ricoh MFDs, a newer, more cost-effective, and more energy-efficient technology approach to document management.

Siemens, with the help of Ricoh, set up an asset database to track, bill, and report documents across India. It also created an integrated printer and IT help desk that logs and tracks all user inquiries and service calls.

How do you take your average enterprise printing set up and then lower costs by half, save over Rs 40 lakh a year, and ensure a 98 percent uptime? Ask Siemens and Ricoh.

Tackling Cost Challenges

Controlling Output Costs

Improving Sustainability

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Ricoh is also helping Siemens to achieve its sustainability goals by introducing Ricoh’s new Quick Start Up (QSU) technology, an energy saving methodology with PxP toner multifunction devices that cause 25 percent less waste than typical laser printers. Ricoh diligently recycles toner cartridges according to its enterprise sustainability guidelines.

In addition, Ricoh ensured that doublesided (duplex) print is a default feature on all its devices. “We have now established an ongoing data-gathering process and critical performance metrics through quality tools, which will eventually form a part of Siemens’ framework for continuously improving the quality of our customer service,” says Kotgire.

Siemens was impressed with Ricoh’s rapid implementation of equipment and services right from Ricoh’s MDS program. Kotgire was able to gain complete control of output costs. “We achieved a 55 percent decrease in costs per page, as we removed 250 outputdevices and simultaneously increased our employee-to device ratio by more than 35 percent. This has enabled us to achieve our financial and document management goals to a high extent,” says Kotgire.

Overall, Ricoh has successfully helped Siemens to save 30 percent in costs, amounting to over Rs 42 lakh a year. Siemens also experienced a significant reduction in its asset base and notable improvements in its printing processes.

Siemens has now decided to continually expand its relationship with Ricoh by including other subsidiaries into the plan. Using Ricoh’s proven model, Siemens will continue to control functions such as helpdesk, break/fix, supplies management, asset management, and proactive device management for all Ricoh and non-Ricoh devices in the company’s offices nationally.

“Ricoh’s technology, knowledge, and process deliver value to our business units, cost savings to IT, and the ability to re-invest those savings in IT innovation,” says Kotgire.

Efficient Service Delivery

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Learn more about Ricoh here - https://ricoh.co.in/about/