Nashua Limited, the largest global distributor of Ricoh International products, has realigned its professional services offering in line with market demands. This offering marks the telecommunications company’s transition in recent times from a solutions company focusing on facilities, IT and procurement departments, into a company aligned to business processes and outcomes, moving more towards an advisory level of consultation at its highest executive level.

 

Ricoh International is a global solutions provider and because of Nashua’s 35 year long strategic partnership with Ricoh, it was able to identify a shift in the solutions market. Nashua has moved away from standardisation and consolidation and is able to proactively engage customers’ business processes and realign corporate strategies.

 

International business analyst Ole Sandner, head of Commercial and Strategic Development at Ricoh International, explained that this change happened due to the manner chief information officers (CIOs) now procure their IT services.

 

It used to be the duty of the procurement department to issue and award tenders, the goal of which was to be as cost effective as possible, but this often resulted in unstructured and underutilised technical solutions. The latter needed to be aligned to business objectives and resulted in costing the company more than was expected.

 

“Research has shown that over the next five years, almost half of all CIOs expect to operate the majority of their applications and infrastructures through partnering and outsourcing, whilst focusing more on key strategic areas. Thus, CIOs need to re-imagine IT to support growth and competitive advantage; raising the strategic importance of IT for the business, rather than focusing solely on the delivery of generic business plans.”

 

Sandner further stated that the changing role of printer vendors over the last five years has also necessitated this change.

 

“Traditionally, a vendor’s role was to implement and manage fleets of printers within companies and optimising output capability. However, as companies have become more competitive, and are being placed under more pressure to perform, this situation has changed, and CIO’s are searching for ongoing business outcomes within their companies, not just specific solutions or products every 4 to 5 years.”

 

Nashua Limited Sales director, David Coutinho added that: “The nature of the business environment has transformed in recent times, and is considerably more socially interactive. Therefore, it is now crucial to not only engage with IT departments and procurement, but with CIO’s and CEO’s as well, in order to gain a better understanding of what their business goals are.”

 

Coutinho noted that Nashua aligns its professional services focus to that of customer outcomes, concentrating on the importance of partnerships, relationships and strategic alignment.

 

“As an example of this, Nashua recently integrated a complete document management solution (DMS) into Avis Fleet Services’ line of business leasing system. The company now operates with enhanced functionality and productivity, easing users’ daily workflow.

 

With almost a quarter of the total marketshare for document related technologies in South Africa, Nashua has provided similar solutions to major corporate companies, including Sasol, Mittal Steel South Africa, Goldfields, Deloitte, as well as the University of Cape Town.