Ricoh SA is the top ranked DocuWare partner for EMEA for 2015 (Diamond Ranking) based on product list price, for all countries in EMEA excluding German-speaking countries.
DocuWare is the enterprise content management platform available in 70 countries and 16 languages with more than 125 000 users and over 14 000 installations.
“One of the primary reasons for our success has been our team’s focus on document management as a value-added benefit to our customers,” says Jacques van Wyk, chief operating officer of Ricoh SA. “This type of solution is beyond the traditional scope of office automation salespeople, although increasingly less so, because they tend to focus on print management. Yet the value proposition is quite straightforward and, with some product training and decades of industry experience, our team was able to rapidly incorporate the solution into their repertoire.
“Adoption in the local market has been sedentary until recently while markets abroad have matured, yet a sharp focus on efficiency brought many local organisations to recently emphasise the value of enterprise content management.”
Ricoh SA’s success with the enterprise content management solution crosses industries but with particular focus on distribution, insurance, petroleum, and manufacturing, where much of its past expertise lay.
The company’s sales personnel also had to adapt their sales approach to suit the peculiarities of the solution and the market.
“Enterprise content management can be a complex concept to pitch in tender documents which lose the nuance of direct human communication,” says Van Wyk. “It’s difficult to impart the sense of understanding a customer’s industry, their business, and business process in general and the ability to deliver a pragmatic, practical solution that meets their needs.”
Ricoh SA’s sales team concentrated on directly meeting potential customers to explain the finer details of how the solution can help them meet their specific business objectives. This approach is a key differentiator in the organisation’s success compared with its rivals in Europe, the Middle East, and the rest of Africa.
“Our counterparts overseas typically respond to tenders, where sales can be lost due to that inability to convey the nuanced detail of enterprise content management projects in meeting specific business objectives,” Van Wyk says.
“That is a loss for customers since these projects can add a great deal of value to their operations.”
The value of DocuWare’s enterprise content management solution lies in:
* The digitisation of operational business documents;
* Document process efficiencies that reduce costs, improve workflows for indexing, collaboration and more;
* Uninterrupted operations during implementation;
* Seamless integration with business systems; and
* Expert change management.
“Digitisation for the sake of digitisation is a poor objective. However, digitisation coupled with workflow and process improvements achieves material cost, efficiency, and productivity results that translate into happier employees and customers. That fundamentally impacts customer retention, churn, and loyalty,” says Van Wyk. “That’s what our people at Ricoh SA understand, which is why the team is the top DocuWare partner for the year.”
