Condeco Helps Ricoh Embrace Flexible Workspaces

Ricoh’s Asia Pacific headquarters was moving to a new office location within Singapore and wanted to seize the opportunity to embrace a more flexible working mode.

To achieve this, the company planned to reduce the number of desk spaces within the office. Instead of every employee having their own dedicated desk space, the company wanted to adopt a shared workstation policy where employees could book a desk for the times they needed one. At the same time, Ricoh wanted to cut down on the number of meeting rooms and increase utilization of the rooms that were left.

Previously, Ricoh had used Lotus Notes to manage the booking of meeting rooms, but this had led to inefficiencies in how the meeting rooms were used. Rooms were often booked but left unused, and employees were able to block-book multiple rooms for long periods of time, even if they didn’t need them. So, in order to improve this process, and enable efficient and flexible booking of the new shared workstations, an alternative solution was sought.

Ricoh turned to Condeco’s workspace booking solution to support their new plans. With desk spaces reduced by 45% and meeting rooms reduced by 53%, employees were able to use the Condeco platform to book the workspaces they needed, either on the web app, through the mobile app or through their Microsoft Outlook calendars. When making their booking, employees could search for co-workers’ locations and book an available workspace nearby, enabling easy collaboration.

Condeco’s flexible workspace booking solution has enabled Ricoh’s employees to quickly find and book any available workspace from their tool of choice for the task at hand. Alongside this, Ricoh deployed screens for every desk and meeting room to indicate the status of each space and help employees quickly check space availability and a Wayfinder screen to help visitors locate meeting rooms upon their arrival.

Additionally, through the analytical capabilities of Condeco, Ricoh’s management has been better able to understand how its workspaces are utilized and can therefore make more informed decisions about workspace layouts and demands in the future.

Soon after the Condeco workspace booking solution was implemented, employees and employer alike benefitted from the flexibility that the software gives them.

From an employee perspective, as well as supporting easier collaboration, they are now able to move between working from home and working from the office seamlessly. And in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ability for Ricoh to meet compliance demands such as social distancing, capacity limits and contact tracing gave employees reassurance that they could return to office work safely.

The ability to halve the number of desks and meeting rooms has freed up space in the new office that Ricoh has repurposed. As a result, they have been able to introduce more informal huddle spaces, as well as some booths for private phone calls.

Finally, as Ricoh is a long-standing partner of Condeco, the company can use the office to demonstrate to visitors and clients how well the solution works in a real-life environment.