"EVERYTHING HAS WORKED BEYOND EXPECTATIONS"

Lars Broms, Business System Manager, Ricoh Sverige

What were you looking for in your procurement of an ERP system?
When we, at what was then Carl Lamm, decided on Jeeves in May 2007 we had not yet been bought out by Ricoh. Of course, it was important for the ERP system to be able to support our business activities. But one thing we were especially looking for was a system that we could easily influence along the way. Another key requirement was that it be easy to upgrade to new versions. The system should not be “locked in” with one vendor; we wanted to be able to develop it ourselves, and with the system vendor and consultants.

Why didn’t you change to the ERP system that Ricoh in Europe mainly uses?
Ricoh thoroughly assessed our processes but concluded that their current ERP system could not support our business process. Among other things, we’ve built a presystem for Jeeves where we can enter 2,000 IT products into the ERP system. Jeeves also has an order entry flow that is tailored to our needs. However, Ricoh Europe has made tough demands on integration with their system, such as with the purchasing and delivery processes of the Ricoh products. That part has also gone smoothly, and we’ve had no problems integrating Jeeves with their system.

How has Jeeves worked at Ricoh?
Everything we asked for in the procurement has performed beyond expectations. Now and before the buyout, we expanded and added business lines, and that’s worked beautifully with Jeeves. We have made some difficult and uncommon demands; for example, early on we decided that all of our 150 salespeople would themselves work directly in the system. It is a very complex process and it’s unusual that the system and the salespeople could handle it, but it has worked extremely well with Jeeves. Now we are going to upgrade our system and, after the tests, it looks good, though we have many adaptations.

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Ricoh Sverige was formed in 2009 by the combination of Carl Lamm and NRG. Ricoh is active in the document and information management sector and offers comprehensive solutions for customers’ IT environments. The Company has operations in 26 locations in Sweden, more than 600 employees, and sales of about SEK 1,500 million.