Ricoh has successfully helped Siemens to save 30% 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. Says Satish Kotgire, “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.”

1. Ricoh helps Siemens drive efficiency and
sustainability
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% uptime? Ask Siemens and Ricoh.
Siemens, a world-class solution provider in the engineering and manufacturing segment, plays a key
role in India’s quest for developing modern infrastructure. As a company, Siemens is committed to
drive causes which maximise value and minimise costs. But that’s not always easy when the
company operates more than 50 offices in 25 cities and has to assimilate additional people and
infrastructure after strategic acquisitions.
Tackling cost challenges

2. 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 wanted to centralise our IT spending for printers, copiers,
consumables, and production sites with the goal of reducing operational and maintenance 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.
Controlling output costs
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-utilised devices,” he says. His 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% of these devices were either out-of-date
or malfunctioning, and were responsible for excessive print costs”.
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.
After a thorough study, Ricoh recognised an opportunity to optimise, rationalise and provide
standard technology platforms to Siemens’ office environment.
Improving sustainability
Kotgire decided to implement a centralised programme to shrink the company’s total annual
document output costs. A large portion of Siemens’ output fleet was replaced with Ricoh MFDs – a

3. 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.
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
result in 25% less waste than typical laser printers. Ricoh diligently recycles toner cartridges
according to its enterprise sustainability guidelines.
In addition, Ricoh ensured that double-sided (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.
Efficient service delivery
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% decrease in costs per page, as we removed 250 output devices and simultaneously increased
our employee-to device ratio by more than 35%. This has enabled us to achieve our financial and
document management goals to a great extent,” says Kotgire.
Overall, Ricoh has successfully helped Siemens to save 30% 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.
Says Satish Kotgire, “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.”
Project ROI
 55% decrease in average cost per page
 30% cost savings, that translates to over Rs. 42 lakh a year
 98% equipment uptime
 Improved employee-to-device ratio by over 35%
 Proactive monitoring of devices
 Standardisation simplifies overall output environment, yet allows for regional/local flexibility
 Scalable, replicable global solution
 Centralised cost control
 Improved regional application and workflow