Helloworld

One of Australia’s leading integrated travel companies, Helloworld Limited provide thousands of wholesale and retail clients with premium travel management, technology and services around the clock. Listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, they operate in Australia, New Zealand, USA, UK and South Africa. Helloworld’s IT department supports over 1300 users across 16 sites in Australia, as well as their international offices.

The network: A key business enabler

Helloworld’s network acts as a key enabler across their distributed offices and call centres. The integrity and strength of its network is crucial in supporting the company’s group of over 25 brands.

Of utmost importance to Helloworld is ensuring their network is offering maximum productivity. With bottlenecks potentially causing disruptions to customer-facing systems and staff processes, as well as communications within and outside the organisation, keeping the network up and running effectively is critical.

Ricoh and Helloworld: A growing partnership

Since first becoming a customer of Ricoh IT Services in 2000, Ricoh has undertaken over 90 projects with Helloworld. As Ricoh has grown to understand the business demands and environment, Helloworld have further expanded their services to encompass network managed services, providing network monitoring, management and maintenance.

In 2011 Helloworld underwent a merger. As a result, a large project was required to design, configure and deploy new WAN and LAN infrastructure across Australia for improved connectivity between the disparate offices.

Supporting the IT Department through every step of that process, Ricoh provided expertise and resources to Helloworld.

Helloworld has been using Ricoh’s Network Management service for ongoing network monitoring and management since 2007. During the merger, the comprehensive visibility enabled through Ricoh Network Management ensured Helloworld had the data required for capacity planning and to make informed decisions for the design of the new network. Ricoh’s engineers, through managing Helloworld’s network, had in-depth knowledge of the environment, enhancing their ability to provide advice and support in the new network design and configuration.

After the merger, Ricoh assisted with follow up work and rationalisation of resources resulting from the recent merger project, as well as advising on efficiencies across Helloworld’s IT budget that resulted in a 10 per cent savings across-the-board.

“Ricoh helped me achieve my budgetary goals, not just in their space but across my entire organisation, and if it wasn’t a strong partner relationship, I wouldn’t have achieved that result,” Brian said. “We have found Ricoh IT Services’ ability to be nimble and flexible very useful,” said Brian. “They develop solutions with a speed and level of efficiency that is rare to find, yet invaluable to our ongoing development.”

Helloworld has been using Ricoh’s Network Management service for ongoing network monitoring and management since 2007. During the merger, the comprehensive visibility enabled through Ricoh’s Network Management ensured Helloworld had the data required for capacity planning and to make informed decisions for the design of the new network. Ricoh’s engineers, through managing Helloworld’s network, had in-depth knowledge of the environment, enhancing their ability to provide advice and support in the new network design and configuration. After the merger, Ricoh assisted with follow up work and rationalisation of resources resulting from the recent merger project, as well as advising on efficiencies across Helloworld’s IT budget that resulted in a 10 per cent savings across-the-board. “Ricoh helped me achieve my budgetary goals, not just in their space but across my entire organisation, and if it wasn’t a strong partner relationship, I wouldn’t have achieved that result,” Brian said. “We have found Ricoh IT Services’ ability to be nimble and flexible very useful,” said Brian. “They develop solutions with a speed and level of efficiency that is rare to find, yet invaluable to our ongoing development.”

Managed services for full support

Helloworld is now embarking on the next step in their journey: a major restructure and rebranding program that includes changes across their sales channels and internal processes. Through Ricoh IT Services, the company’s IT department is well equipped to deliver strong results in the required timeframe. For Helloworld, which encompasses household brands such as Qantas Holidays, Harvey World Travel and Bestflights.com.au, the restructure involves moving to a new business model and taking an innovative position in the market. For Helloworld’s IT department, it means providing more services across their network to franchisees, as well as a stronger and more direct reliance on all brand internet sites. “Going into this business transformation, it’s going to be very challenging. One of the key enablers that will help Helloworld through this transformation is the ability to lean on Ricoh for services, resources and advice,” Brian said. Through Ricoh’s Network Management service, Helloworld’s IT department have access to Ricoh’s senior, level 3, network engineers whenever they need them – 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This will free up internal resources from network management tasks and help Brian ensure that all his staff can be focused on confidently delivering the capability required for Helloworld’s successful restructure. Network uptime will be ensured through Ricoh’s Network Management, while also reducing costs and corporate risk. “Ricoh can really help Helloworld gain experience, skill and scale that we don’t have internally. They will help keep Helloworld’s IT organisation predictable while the business is unpredictable,” Brian said. “That will allow IT to meet customer’s needs and deliver value to the organisation.” “Ricoh is one of the best-placed organisations to help us through this transition because of the flexibility, size and refreshing approach they take to solving problems.”

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