Businesses recognize that the challenges and costs of supporting some business functions are prohibitive, and it is better for the organization to outsource. There are many reasons to outsource, but staffing, expertise, and costs are at the core. Business process outsourcing (BPO) is a reliable way to source expertise through specialized providers working in specific domains that augment your internal resources. Businesses of all types are catching on to the BPO trend. According to Grand View Research, the BPO market is growing at a 9.4% annual compound growth rate, reaching $280.64 billion in 2023.

The labor market continues to be strained due to historically low levels of unemployment. Employers face difficulty and rising costs in acquiring specialized talent, particularly in IT-related fields, if you can find them at all. BPO benefits extend beyond labor. Businesses can convert fixed costs into variable costs through outsourcing, releasing capital for investment in other areas. They also gain access to world-class capabilities and technologies they might not possess in-house. This approach unlocks scalability and flexibility because the labor and supporting technologies can change with the demand cycles of the business.

Nebraskaland, a supplier of more than 5000 perishable items based in New York, successfully outsourced most of its IT operations to Ricoh so it could focus on its core mission and business as a full-service supplier to stores and warehouses.

Ricoh’s Managed IT Services are a
$250k Difference Maker for Nebraskaland

Nebraskaland, with its 5-generation business focused on meat and perishables distribution, faced the challenge of modernizing its IT infrastructure. The company initially managed its IT, including a costly IBM server, supported by four full-time IT staff. The financial and logistical strain, especially during critical overnight operations, prompted a need for change.

The company’s first step outsourced IT services to a small IT company that relocated the IBM server to their facility in New Jersey. Nebraskaland quickly realized the company lacked the support resources and infrastructure to fix issues, especially in critical overnight hours when the company prepares orders for early morning delivery.

Nebraskaland needed a company that could provide robust 24/7 managed IT services and found Ricoh met the brief as one of the largest IT service providers in the United States. Ricoh quickly created a roll swap plan to replicate the production server in New Jersey with a migration plan to a fully managed, cloud-based IT service model with redundancy for disaster recover. The service expanded to include hardware, networking, and wireless access support.

Optimizing IT infrastructure is only one part of managed IT services. The other equally critical component is the level of service and support. Shortly into the transition to Ricoh, orders were not going through to Nebraskaland’s warehouse picking system during the critical overnight shift. The company contacted the help desk, who quickly identified that the issue could not be resolved remotely. Two Ricoh technicians rushed to the warehouse and got the system back online. “The Ricoh technicians were on the dock and in the freezer with us, analyzing what caused our problem and got it fixed,” said Romanoff. “They really came through for us.”

Customer Benefits

Nebraskaland eliminated the costs of an on-premise server and salaries for four IT staff by shifting to a managed IT services plan from Ricoh. Other benefits included:

  • Shifted all mission-critical servers to a data center and added a disaster recovery solution
  • Eliminated server room hardware costs and associated salaries
  • Improved efficiency in purchasing, warehousing, and delivery