A one-stop solution to streamline Indexator
The challenge
Indexator Rotator AB is a manufacturing company from Vindeln in the Västerbotten interior that is a world leader in the manufacturing of rotators. The company operates in an international market and delivers to just over 40 countries around the world.
Quality has always been a watchword for Indexator, and a combination of extensive, solid experience, an ultra-modern production facility and carefully selected suppliers has created the conditions for Indexator becoming a world leader in its field.
Shortly after Indexator underwent a change of ownership, Josef Alenius received an invitation to take up a position as the company’s CEO, having already been CEO at the companies Texor and Hultdins for a few years. Josef has extensive experience of business development and believes that one of the preconditions for success is to streamline – quite simply to focus on the core business and create cost efficiency.
”For us, it was largely about streamlining and focusing on our core business, quite simply analysing what we should be really good at and what we should let others take care of for us”
The solution
As with many manufacturing companies, operational disruption can result in major costs, so a reliable IT environment is absolutely business-critical. Collaboration between Texor and Nordlo goes back more than 12 years, and in 2019 Nordlo was entrusted with an enquiry to help Indexator as well. This involved a risk and vulnerability analysis, as one step in acquiring a deeper understanding of the IT environment. The analysis and suggested improvements presented by Nordlo made the choice a simple one:
“IT is important for so many reasons: business systems, design, production and contact with our customers. We needed a comprehensive solution and the choice made was the natural one, to outsource the entire IT operation to Nordlo,” says Josef.
“In just one year, we’ve moved from a fragmented IT environment where we spent lots of our own time on maintenance, to a reliable one-stop solution. We’ve also gained access to a broader range of competence and peace of mind in being able to get help quickly when we need it, which has resulted straight away in a more satisfied workgroup and a positive view of IT throughout the organisation,” continues Josef.
In terms of space, it is also difficult to manage the company’s own servers, which require both cooling and security. Nordlo’s Bergrummet data centre, with its green profile and security classification, appealed to Indexator, and a hybrid IT solution was created to guarantee full availability and functionality.
Replacement of business system
A versatile business system is absolutely crucial, whatever the industry. It needs to encompass virtually everything relating to the business, and Josef is satisfied with the support they received from Nordlo when the replacement took place.
“Collaboration worked really well, like many other industrial companies we chose to implement Monitor, and during autumn 2020 we switched from Infor M3 to Monitor G5, which naturally meant that you encounter problems during startup, but Nordlo managed to resolve everything in a really good way.”
For Indexator and Josef, it was important to choose an IT partner with broad knowledge and a good understanding of their business, but he also points out how critical it is to access immediate support if a problem does occur.
“We wanted to spend more time developing our business, and were also able to cut our IT costs almost in half, although at the end of the day it is of course about our employees quickly getting the support they need to be able to do what they are best at,” concludes Josef.
Customer benefit
Josef lists the three major benefits for Indexator from outsourcing their IT.
- Focus on our core business– by letting someone else take care of IT operations, we can focus whole-heartedly on what we’re good at.
- Security and backup– Operational disruption can be expensive, but with a reliable IT environment, the risk of any interruption has been minimised.
- Cost reduction– by outsourcing our IT, we have halved our IT costs.
About Indexator
Indexator employs almost 110 employees. The company was founded in Vindeln back in the 1960s, and was acquired by the Lifco Group a few years ago. Lifco owns nearly 170 companies all over the world and has total net sales of more than SEK 14 billion. Find out more at indexator.se.