Ludvig Svensson becomes more efficient thanks to process
automation
The challenge
The family-owned textile company Ludvig Svensson has a strong focus on innovation and a passion for developing textiles with function and design as the most important features. The company is a global player with a local touch, and when a need arose to digitalise its innovation process, they turned to Nordlo as a close collaboration partner.
As innovation and new, customer-specific solutions are such an important element of Ludvig Svensson’s business, the internal processes needed to be developed and digitalised to enable continued development and to relieve the load on employees. When the company identified difficulties in keeping up with follow-up and feedback on incoming suggested innovations from employees in the company’s ideas box, they turned to their full-service partner in the field of IT and digitalisation, Nordlo, and to our business developer, to consider the possibility of digitalising and automating the process.
”We can see a major difference in being able to handle innovative ideas in an efficient way”
- Stefan Rietdijk, business developer at Ludvig Svensson
The solution
”It’s really interesting and challenging in a positive way to collaborate with Ludvig Svensson, as they are a very innovative and forward-looking company,” says Viktor Gustavsson, business developer at Nordlo. “Together, we launched a project to develop the innovative team’s entire process for handling ideas that develop the company.”
The actual innovation process has been in existence for many years at Ludvig Svensson, until recently consisting of ideas from all the company’s employees being sent in by email or on a form. The process of following up, responding and producing statistics became difficult to monitor, and employees were also unable to track the development of the ideas they had suggested.
“We can see a major difference in being able to handle innovative ideas in an efficient way. We now have an innovation team that handles incoming ideas through automated processes in the company’s cloud environment,” says Stefan Rietdijk, business developer at Ludvig Svensson. “The transparency in the system has also been developed, so that our 370 employees in different countries can monitor the innovation process more clearly.”
The biggest challenge was that the actual ideas process became time-consuming when employees at Ludvig Svensson needed to follow up and ask questions about anything missing from the idea that had been submitted. There was also no clear strategy for storing the documents.
In a step towards being a more data-driven organisation, the manual elements of the work can now be automated. There is also greater transparency for all employees, as they can now track their ideas and see how they are helping the company’s development.
Ludvig Svensson is now benefiting from more of the opportunities that exist in the organisation’s existing productivity tool. Completed forms are now added to automated flows that are triggered when an idea is submitted, after which the members of the innovation team are automatically assigned tasks. In addition to the process having been both simplified and improved, it has become much easier to access the correct information quickly.
“We’ve barely scratched the surface of the opportunities that exist in our current environment to automate processes and create efficiency.” continues Stefan. “In the next stage, we’ll be reviewing more flows to digitalise that should create efficiency for us. My recommendation for any company that wants to start automating is to make contact with Nordlo’s business developers. Viktor really has been a help to us.”
Customer value
The collaboration between Nordlo and Ludvig Svensson is based on a close partnership in which Nordlo has the role of proactive IT partner to Ludvig Svensson’s existing IT organisation. The collaboration started with an updating of Ludvig Svensson’s IT security solutions, licence management and server infrastructure. By accepting support from Nordlo in everything from IT operations through networks, IT security and licence management to digitalisation services, time is freed up for Ludvig Svensson to focus on innovation and the company’s key issues.
Nordlo’s consultants are on site at the customer’s premises every week, running projects on infrastructure, network solutions and the journey into the cloud. Nordlo also provides 24/7 support for Ludvig Svensson’s units all over the world.
“With a proactive work method and meetings about visions, we look forward to embracing the digital development together with Ludvig Svensson,” says Per Bidemyr, account manager at Nordlo.
About Ludvig Svensson
Ludvig Svensson offers climate and environmental solutions for professional interior designers and greenhouse growers. It is a family-owned textile company in its fourth generation, dating back to 1887.
It is a goal- and value-based company with short decision-making paths, organised in two business areas: Climate Screens and Interior Textiles. Global strategies with a focus on the customer are realised locally through marketing companies in the Netherlands, the USA, Mexico, China and South Korea.
The textiles are produced in the company’s own factories in Kinna, Sweden and Shanghai, China under the Svensson brand, for export to more than 130 countries. The head office is based in Kinna. The Group has net sales of SEK 740 million and 370 employees in total.
Find out more at: ludvigsvensson.com