Case Study: Ashford Borough Council

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History and Context

Ashford Borough Council provides a wide range of community services to approximately 140,000 residents in southeast England. The council employs 750 people and manages a complex yet lean budget.

As remote and online work continue to reshape traditional office planning, finding smarter ways to manage and optimize workspace utilization has become a top priority for the council.

As part of a broader strategy to improve operational efficiency, the organization recently relocated to a modern office. In addition to providing a better work environment and reducing operating costs, the new building is significantly smaller, creating new challenges around workspace allocation and reservations.

Business Challenge

Ashford Borough Council moved from a three-story headquarters with capacity for approximately 500 employees to a new office with just over 200 desks. As a result, effectively managing occupancy became essential to ensuring a successful transition and supporting an efficient hybrid work model.

"Our previous workspace booking application offered limited functionality and didn't integrate with other essential collaboration tools. We wanted a solution that supported both desk and meeting room reservations while seamlessly integrating with Microsoft Teams and other business applications," explains Robin Jones, Service Lead, IT & Digital at Ashford Borough Council.

The project's key objectives included:

Enabling a flexible and productive hybrid work model.

Strengthening emergency preparedness and employee safety.

Seamlessly integrating with the organization's core collaboration tools.

RICOH Solution

During a series of discussions about improving the new workplace environment, Ashford Borough Council discovered RICOH Spaces, a comprehensive workplace management platform that provides integrated desk and meeting room booking, visitor management, and advanced analytics and reporting capabilities.

"RICOH Spaces met all of our requirements: occupancy optimization, desk and meeting room reservations, and integration with our most important collaboration applications. Most importantly, Ricoh supported our team throughout the entire transition process," says Robin Jones.

One of the features the council values most is the integration between RICOH Spaces and Microsoft 365. Employees can reserve meeting rooms directly through the platform, and the meeting is automatically added to their Outlook calendars. The solution also allows Microsoft Teams meeting links to be included automatically, enabling remote participants to join with a single click.

"The integration capabilities are one of RICOH Spaces' greatest strengths. If someone is giving a presentation in a meeting room, remote attendees simply click the calendar link to join. That's especially valuable when external partners, such as architects or urban planners, need to participate in a meeting," Robin adds.

RICOH Spaces also provides complete visibility into all desk and meeting room reservations, along with detailed reports on workspace utilization. In addition, the council uses room booking displays installed outside each meeting room, allowing employees to see real-time availability, upcoming reservations, and check in upon arrival.

"We've configured RICOH Spaces so that meeting rooms are automatically released if no one checks in within 15 minutes of the scheduled start time. However, for longer bookings, for example, when our elections team needs a room for several days to count postal ballots, we can disable this feature to avoid confusion. The solution gives us a great deal of flexibility," Robin explains.

Results

Increased Productivity Through Integrated Solutions: With RICOH Spaces, employees can quickly locate and reserve available desks and meeting rooms at the new headquarters, improving both collaboration and productivity.

"Our users are becoming increasingly familiar with the platform. Some prefer accessing it through a web browser, while others use the mobile app. Personally, I find the mobile app extremely fast and very intuitive," says Robin.

Improved Visitor Experience and Enhanced Safety: Visitor check-in and check-out features help reduce wait times at reception while improving workplace safety.

"Our Facilities team finds the visitor management tools extremely valuable from a health and safety perspective. They can instantly see how many people are in the building at any given time and identify everyone on-site during fire drills or other emergencies," Robin continues.

Greater Transparency and Data-Driven Decision Making: Looking ahead, the council plans to leverage data from RICOH Spaces to analyze workplace occupancy and hybrid work trends, supporting greater accountability and institutional transparency.

"Our elected council members are interested in understanding and overseeing how we operate as a public organization. The data and reports from RICOH Spaces will allow us to provide greater transparency into our workplace practices," Robin explains.

Ongoing Support from Ricoh: has become an integral part of the council's workplace management strategy, and the organization is already planning to explore additional capabilities, including IoT sensors.

"The support provided by Ricoh has been outstanding, whether through the AI assistant for quick questions or through support tickets handled by the RICOH Spaces team. They always respond quickly and with real expertise," concludes Robin Jones.

This success story is another example of how Ricoh transforms workplaces into intelligent environments where productivity flows naturally, time is optimized, and meetings start on schedule without disruption. It's a transformation that drives collaboration and operational efficiency across Latin America and around the world.

Ricoh Latin America, and Ashford Borough Council acted together in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for a better future:

Ricoh at a global level is a company committed to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by solving social problems through business with the sole purpose of achieving economic growth, a better planet. and a better society.