Sentisystems Photo: Robin Ar, Avinor

How SentiSystems connects strategy to daily operations

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SentiSystemsCompany:
SentiSystems

Industry:
Autonomous Systems and Sensor Fusion

Country:
Norway

Onboarding has become much faster and has made new employees immediately blend into the team,
Sentisystems Arne Kjølsvik
Arne Kjølsvik CEO - SentiSystems

In 2021, Arne Kjørsvik started the Norwegian company SentiSystems, which is a spin-off from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, in Trondheim. SentiSystems has developed a platform solution, SentiBoard, for real-time processing of sensor data.

“It is mainly about the integration of sensors for autonomous operations, but the platform is also suitable for other intelligent applications, such as mapping and monitoring,” says Arne Kjørsvik, who is also CEO of SentiSystems.

SentiSystems specializes in areas where robotics is used in laser-guided trucks, mobile robots and drones. It can then be about logistics, warehousing and transport.

“In addition, SentiBoard enables efficient and scalable integration of sensors and navigation without satellites in logistics, maritime and defence,” says Arne Kjørsvik.

Liked the overview

This fast-growing company, which today has ten employees and many different stakeholders, felt that they needed a tool for planning and management by objectives that in a good way connected the company’s strategy and the long-term goals with the operational activities in everyday life. A tool that could be used both internally in the organization and outwards towards all stakeholders.

“We simply needed to improve the implementation of the strategy in the operational operations.

After evaluating several tools for this, the choice fell on VisPlan’s visual solution for goals, results and planning.

“We liked the overview that VisPlan provides of what we work with and how this is linked to our strategy. It helps us to focus on what is important in a simple way and make priorities to work towards future goals,” says Arne Kjølsvik.

Important with a living system

He notes that in a start-up where a lot is happening at a fast pace, it is important to work with the business plan and strategy in a living system instead of in a static document.

“VisPlan helps us follow developments in a fast-paced and changing world.

Arne Kjølsvik notes that the introduction of VisPlan has both saved time and increased clarity.

“Among other things, we have reduced the time spent preparing for board meetings, reduced the number of status meetings and the time spent creating PowerPoints, documents and reports. The interaction is also perceived much better after the introduction of VisPlan.

Easier onboarding

He also highlights that another great benefit is that the simplicity of VisPlan makes it easy for new people who have been recruited to quickly get a picture of where the company wants to go and how the business works.

“Onboarding has simply become much faster and made new employees immediately blend into the team,” says Arne Kjølsvik.

He has also seen that since VisPlan is built for Microsoft 365 and connects to Teams, MS Planner and Excel, for example, it requires minimal training to use the system as well as better ROI because there is no overlap in functionality.

This is how VisPlan works:

  1. Formulate strategy: With VisPlan, you can identify and visualize the critical capabilities that need to be developed to achieve the desired goals and position in the competitive business world.
  2. Act and implement: To achieve the business goals, you need to connect OKRs with the capabilities that exist in the company. VisPlan provides a powerful and user-friendly interface to manage this, helping the company stay on track and communicate with a common information model. 
  3. Execute, adapt, and iterate: VisPlan enables agility by allowing the company to review, measure, and draw insights from its OKRs.

 Contact

Contact VisPlan: Staffan Lindö, +46 76 600 66 67, [email protected] 

Contact SentiSystems: Arne Kjørsvik, +47 932 02 013, [email protected]

 

This article is translated from an original piece “Så kopplar SentiSystems strategin till den dagliga driften”
published by VD-tidningen, 7 July 2024.

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Stamford -Businessareas

The tool that made the management team speak the same language

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Stamford - AddNode Group

Company:
Stamford

Industry:
Information Technology

Country:
Sweden

Andrea Kosa has seen that after the introduction of VisPlan, the management team meetings became much more efficient.
Andrea Kosa
Andrea Kösa CEO - Stamford

Stamford develops and innovates industry-specific IT systems with a focus on processes and flows in service companies and public organizations. For more than 30 years, they have delivered software, services and customized solutions to customers with very high demands on reliability in their mission-critical systems.

Stamford belongs to the Addnode Group and works closely with the Group’s other companies. 90 people work at Stamford’s offices in Stockholm, Karlstad, Gothenburg and Malmö, and have several of their own employees at Addnode India in Pune. In 2023, the company had a turnover of approximately SEK 108 million.

“We have ongoing development work in close collaboration with our customers, which ensures that the distance between our creative ideas and the practical benefit to the customer is short,” says Andrea Kosa, CEO of Stamford.

Many different industries

Stamford has mainly grown through acquisitions, which has enriched the business with a number of different industries.

Port authorities both in Sweden and outside use Stamford’s combined business and operational system that covers all the processes required to run a port.

Stamford also has systems and services specifically tailored for large retail chains and specialist retailers. They also have many collaborations in the field of defence and insurance. Preparation systems for the electrical industry and systems for the event industry are other parts of their product portfolio.

Challenges of diversifying operations

“Since we operate in many different industries, it was impossible for me as CEO and for the management team to keep track of all the threads. We needed to be better at connecting the company’s strategy and long-term goals with the operational activities in everyday life,” says Andrea Kosa.

For just over three years, after evaluating several tools, they have been using VisPlan for planning and management by objectives. VisPlan is an app for Microsoft Teams that allows you to formulate your strategy, coordinate and implement a governance model, priorities, programs and plans.

“It also helps us stay focused throughout the process,” says Andrea Kosa.

Got a good overview

She notes that being able to have a common picture of the planning and management by objectives has been particularly important for Stamford because they have so many different branches of business.

“By using VisPlan, we have gained a magical function that makes it easier to speak the same language and see the company as a whole. The fact that the goals and sub-goals are displayed visually and easily understands means that everyone can go in and update their part and quickly get a good overview of where we are going and what priorities are lagging behind,” says Andrea Kosa.

More effective meetings

She has seen that after the introduction of VisPlan, the management team meetings became much more efficient.

“The discussions became more concrete on an overall level and we completely cut out the bicycle rack issues. Nowadays, the meetings are increasingly about strategic issues that are prioritized at the moment.

Andrea Kosa has also seen that the use of VisPlan has made it easier for new members of the management team to familiarize themselves with the current situation and where their sights are set.

“It simply facilitates the integration of new leaders into the company, not least in the event of an acquisition and merger,” says Andrea Kosa.

The Stamford companies today are: Stamford AB, Elpool AB and Addoceo AB.

This is how Stamford uses VisPlan:

  1. Prioritization and goal setting: VisPlan structures the business plan on a single page, making it easy to identify and prioritize initiatives. In addition, it provides real-time information about the status of each activity.
  2. Unified business plan: By breaking down the master plan into sub-plans for each business unit, Stamford can see how each unit contributes to the company’s success.
  3. Increased transparency: VisPlan has increased transparency by clearly showing responsibility and progress for defined goals.

VisPlan is built for Microsoft 365 and uses Azure Active Directory for authentication. All data is stored in your own Teams environment and works seamlessly with Microsoft Planner

Contact

Contact VisPlan: Staffan Lindö, +46 76 600 66 67, [email protected] 

This article is translated from an original piece “Verktyget som fick ledningsgruppen att tala samma språk”
published by VD-tidningen, 6 August 2024.

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Single Technologies – Strategy on a visual one-pager put our business plan in motion

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Single Technologies

Company:
Single Technologies

Industry:
Medtech

Country:
Sweden

"To enter our strategy into the visual plan helped us formulate a clear desired position, identify essential capabilities, and define common strategic goals. As we now implement the strategy it is very powerful to track the degree of completion of different activities and immediately see if any is encountering issues."
Johan Strömqvist CEO - Single Technologies

Single was founded in 2014 as a unique combination of PhD research from the Royal Institute of Technology and R&D in the fiber optical grating industry. A strong multidisciplinary team is pushing the limits of what the industry assumes is possible when it comes to sequencing and Big Data generation.

The Challenge

It was a challenge to take newly explored research and technology to the market with a combined effort to bring all the science disciplines together into a concerted effort.

We needed to come up with a commonly understandable and agreed upon overall purpose and strategic objectives among our scientists to begin with. Secondly, we needed to structure the organization to deliver against the overall purpose and objectives.

Single Technologies VisPlan Plan

The common goal – The Nobel Purpose

In general, for scientific environments, most special skills have their own unique understanding and purpose. At first, we were all skeptical about VisPlan methodology, mostly because it started from the very basics in language building.

But we found the methodology was very efficient by bringing fundamental language rules to the strategy process and how to formulate the plan content. We came up with a very strong definition of our business purpose: “We instigate 3-D Seq to decompile the coding of life” and clearly defined strategic objectives to get there.

Capability – Driven Strategy

The next step was to structure the organization. 

Originally, we were inclined to do it by normal standards, that is by functions. But as VisPlan methodology recommended to structure the plan by capabilities, we started to think in terms of “Which are our capabilities” and “What capabilities do we need to meet our common goals”.

In the end we did not just structure a capability-driven business plan, but also choose to organize the company according to the capabilities we identified as essential to reach our strategic objectives.

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