As organizations renew their focus on revenue growth, modernization, optimization, cost-control and improving productivity rank among their top priorities. This is one of the key findings from the CGI Voice of Our Clients research.
Riwal is a specialist in safe and efficient freight transportation. Started as a family business, the company is now a global player with 75 branches in 16 countries. Riwal rents, sells and maintains aerial work platforms, telehandlers, forklift trucks, and their parts. As a knowledge partner, Riwal also trains 2,000 students every year to become skilled operators. Following growth in recent years, Riwal plans to continue this upward trend and become the largest digital leader in the rental industry.
With CGI as a trusted IT partner, Riwal is looking to accelerate digitalization and transform into a data-driven company to achieve greater business outcomes.
Together with CGI, we will take our digitalization to a higher level in the coming years. This makes us more agile and gives us the opportunity to respond to the increasingly rapidly changing economy, market and business needs.
CEO, Riwal
The challenge
Riwal collaborates with several partners to support its IT landscape. In total, the company has about 40 systems running. Managing their IT environment requires a lot of time and attention. The goal is to alleviate this burden so Riwal can focus on its core activities—renting, selling, and maintaining aerial work platforms—as well as innovation and business transformation.
Riwal's vision is to become more data-driven and have an end-to-end link with the back-end systems of major rental companies. This would help the company avoid the traditional manual-intensive process that relied heavily on phone calls and manual data processing. Digitalization would be a key enabler, helping lower costs and providing greater efficiency, faster services, and more usable data.
Riwal was looking for an experienced IT service provider to manage their ICT network and application development and management. They also wanted a partner with the knowledge and skills to advance their digitalization goals. Our previous collaboration gave Riwal the confidence to choose CGI to help them achieve their objectives. This would include managing business-critical applications, application development and management, digital workplaces and ICT network, and providing a global service desk.
Our solution
Even before signing the 10-year contract in 2022, CGI experts had already begun developing a deeper understanding of Riwal's business and how technology supports their operations. The rental industry has specific IT requirements, and this proactive step helped accelerate the transition once the contract was signed.
Taking a phased approach, we divided the transition into three parts. The first phase focused on business-critical applications, the second on further digitalization, and the final one on non-critical applications.
Phase one was split into two batches, with "go live" planned after the second batch. We used the insights gathered from the first batch to optimize the process for the second batch. This testing period provided the opportunity to tweak batch one applications further before both batches went live.
CGI experts from our operations in the Netherlands and India worked together on this project. Our experts from India arrived in the Netherlands to assess the applications alongside our Dutch team and the client. The assessment included visits to warehouses and hangars with aerial work platforms and conversations with the product owners to understand the applications better. All acquired knowledge was immediately documented to ensure project continuity.
The phased approach allowed the project to move forward systematically, beginning each step with insights gained from the previous ones. By understanding how Riwal works and the organizational dynamics, we were able to map Riwal's needs and expectations better and advance their IT at lower costs. As a result, Riwal had more time and resources to innovate its core activities.
Next steps
The transition was completed on time and on budget. Riwal returned to business as usual, and we continue to support application management and development and address any IT issues. We provide 24/7 ICT end-user support and management at an infrastructure and application level. Working together as an ecosystem with Riwal and its partners, we aim to deliver business value wherever possible. We are also improving the company's IT infrastructure to ensure more efficient processes, lower costs, and expand IT services. This will also help improve data quality and agility.
Regular meetings are crucial for advancing our engagement and ensuring an open line of communication and alignment between all stakeholders. For example, there is a quarterly calibration meeting to review whether the estimated required capacity and associated costs are still accurate. Based on this calibration, we can scale up or down. In addition, we have a monthly service level report to help Riwal achieve their digitalization ambition in a structured, transparent and coordinated way.
