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Editor’s comment

Finland’s IT sector turns layoffs to its advantage

Bang & Olufsen takes control of sales data

Google Cloud chief targets enterprises and Amazon Web Services

DNB banks on outsourcing to save costs

Scandinavian Airlines CIO has high hopes for digital technologies

How a teacher’s skills taught IT team to cooperate at Swedish municipality Vara

computerweekly.com STEV

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Finns shape new futureFinland’s IT sector turns hard-hitting

Nokia and Microsoft layoffs to its advantage

CW NordicsNOVEMBER 2016 - JANUARY 2017

The quarterly magazine from Computer Weekly, focusing on business IT in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland

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Editor’s comment

Finland’s IT sector turns layoffs to its advantage

Bang & Olufsen takes control of sales data

Google Cloud chief targets enterprises and Amazon Web Services

DNB banks on outsourcing to save costs

Scandinavian Airlines CIO has high hopes for digital technologies

How a teacher’s skills taught IT team to cooperate at Swedish municipality Vara

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Job cuts fail to dampen tech sector spirits

In this quarter’s ezine, we look at the impact that the huge staff layoffs at Nokia and Microsoft are having on Finland and, in particular, the city of Espoo, home to both Nokia and Microsoft’s Finnish headquarters.

In April, Nokia announced 1,032 job cuts in Finland after its merger with French networking giant Alcatel-Lucent. At the same time, Microsoft scaled down its smartphone business globally and reduced its headcount in Finland by up to 1,350.

But in Tampere, another city affected by the cuts, there is a move to become less dependent on the success of one big company. Read in this issue how the city has been quick to react by launching an international cam-paign called Tampere4ICT to promote the fact that it will have 1,000 experienced ICT professionals available.

According to the Finnish Software Industry and Entrepreneurs’ Association, although many large technology corporations have laid off staff in Finland, the total number of people working in the country’s software sector has stayed at about 60,000. The organisation estimates that 7,000 programmers are needed just to meet the needs of the technology sector.

Also in this issue, read how Denmark-based audiovisual manufacturer Bang & Olufsen implemented cloud-based channel data management software from Zyme to get a clearer view of how its sales channels perform after the success of a new online business.

Although it is still early days, B&O Play says it has no doubt that this investment will bring value to the organisation, and it plans to include more retailers in the new data capture and sharing initiative.

Elsewhere, we talk to three CIOs in the Nordic region about their changing roles and the challenges they face in the unrelenting march of digital platforms. n

Karl Flinders, editor

EDITOR’S COMMENTHOME

CW

Tampere has been quick To reacT by launching

an inTernaTional campaign To promoTe The

facT ThaT iT will have 1,000 experienced icT professionals available

cw nordics November 2016 - January 2017 3

Home

Editor’s comment

Finland’s IT sector turns layoffs to its advantage

Bang & Olufsen takes control of sales data

Google Cloud chief targets enterprises and Amazon Web Services

DNB banks on outsourcing to save costs

Scandinavian Airlines CIO has high hopes for digital technologies

How a teacher’s skills taught IT team to cooperate at Swedish municipality Vara

Finland’s IT sector keeps bouncing back Regional development organisations in Finland describe how, despite recent job cuts, Nokia and Microsoft have provided the foundations for IT industry development. Eeva Haaramo reports

Another year, another round of layoffs in the tech sector. This has been true in Finland since 2011, and 2016 is no exception. In April, Nokia announced 1,032 Finnish job

cuts after its merger with French network giant Alcatel-Lucent. At the same time, Microsoft scaled down its smartphone busi-ness globally and reduced its headcount in Finland by up to 1,350 employees. But in typical Nordic style, the country has found new ways to move forward.

“When you look back [over the past few years] there has been a round of layoffs almost every summer,” said Tuula Antola, busi-ness and economic development director for Espoo, home to both Nokia and Microsoft’s Finnish headquarters.

“The Microsoft news was expected, it was only a matter of time, but it was really unfortunate this coincided with Nokia’s signifi-cant job cuts,” Antola added. “On the other hand, this can be seen as an opportunity. By combining the expertise now available we can attract new global players [to Finland].”

Oula Välipakka, senior manager at the Tampere Region Economic Development Agency (Tredea), shares this sentiment. In its heyday of the early 2000s, Nokia employed more than 24,000 people in Finland, around 4,500 in Tampere alone, but

the latter number will soon be close to 700 as Nokia cuts staff and Microsoft terminates mobile phone development in the city.

Despite the cuts, Välipakka said there would be opportuni-ties for Tampere’s growing ICT sector as the city would be less

dependent on the success of one big company. The city has been fast to react. In early June, it launched an international Tampere4ICT campaign to promote the fact it will have 1,000 experienced ICT professionals available.

ANALYSIS

while many large Technology corporaTions have cuT sTaff in finland, The ToTal number of

people working in The sofTware secTor in The counTry has sTayed

aT around 60,000

cw nordics November 2016 - January 2017 4

Home

Editor’s comment

Finland’s IT sector turns layoffs to its advantage

Bang & Olufsen takes control of sales data

Google Cloud chief targets enterprises and Amazon Web Services

DNB banks on outsourcing to save costs

Scandinavian Airlines CIO has high hopes for digital technologies

How a teacher’s skills taught IT team to cooperate at Swedish municipality Vara

Välipakka said the phones had been ringing already. “I just spoke with a company that is thinking about opening a 150-worker unit in Tampere. This is because of the amount of the expertise com-ing to the labour market,” he added.

Välipakka expects the first new investments in the city to be announced soon.

Alongside Tampere, Espoo and Oulu are two major cities hit hard by the latest layoff news. Nokia is axing 500 of its 3,500

employees in Espoo, and around 250 jobs in each of the two other cities by the end of 2018. This is part of the company’s efforts to eliminate overlapping functions in its new organisation of 104,000 employees which, according to Bloomberg, may put up to 15,000 jobs at risk globally.

For its part, Microsoft will shut down Microsoft Mobile Oy in Finland by June 2017, leaving “a few development teams in Espoo” and around 270 people in a separate sales and marketing

ANALYSIS

Nokia is axing 500 of its 3,500 employees in Espoo

cw nordics November 2016 - January 2017 5

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Editor’s comment

Finland’s IT sector turns layoffs to its advantage

Bang & Olufsen takes control of sales data

Google Cloud chief targets enterprises and Amazon Web Services

DNB banks on outsourcing to save costs

Scandinavian Airlines CIO has high hopes for digital technologies

How a teacher’s skills taught IT team to cooperate at Swedish municipality Vara

subsidiary. This follows several turbulent years since Microsoft acquired Nokia’s mobile phone business, with the company cut-ting 1,050 Finnish jobs in 2014 and 2,300 in 2015.

Programmers in demandAlthough the figures make for grim reading, there is a silver lin-ing: software developers are in a constant demand in Finland. Rasmus Roiha, CEO of the Finnish Software Industry and Entrepreneurs’ Association, said while many large technology

firms had cut staff in Finland, the total number of people work-ing in the software sector in the country has stayed at around 60,000. “This means [the people made redundant] have been employed somewhere else,” said Roiha. “The net reducers have been corporations that employ more than 1,000 people, and on the receiving side is the SME sector, which has been growing.”

The association estimated 7,000 programmers were needed just to meet the needs of the technology sector. While this is good news for some of those made redundant, Roiha pointed out there were challenges in matching their skills with demand, particularly from smaller companies where the needs can differ from those of large corporations.

Another company that sees the layoffs as a major opportunity is Tampere-based information management company M-Files. It recently secured €33m in funding and plans to hire 80 to 100 new employees in the next year. CEO Miika Mäkitalo said many ex-Microsoft and Nokia employees have the kind of experience an internationally focused company needs. “Microsoft’s major layoff wave is unfortunate and ends one phase in the Finnish economic history, but, at the same time, there are a lot of great profession-als coming to the technology sector. They have gone through the Nokia ‘university’ and can bring new strengths and thinking to SMEs,” said Mäkitalo. “In Tampere alone, ICT companies will hire almost 1,000 employees this year. This is why I see that in a medium-long timespan the effect of these redundancies to the IT sector may even be positive.”

Startup boostWhile the fall of Nokia’s mobile phone business was initially seen as a national tragedy in Finland, it has had an invigorating effect on its startup scene. The latest layoffs are expected to continue the trend as many choose to test their skills in entrepreneurship.

Significant credit for this goes to Nokia. The company’s Bridge programme, run from 2011 to 2014, is estimated to have

ANALYSIS

while The fall of nokia’s mobile phone business was

iniTially seen as a naTional Tragedy in finland, iT has had an invigoraTing effecT on The

counTry’s sTarTup scene

cw nordics November 2016 - January 2017 6

Home

Editor’s comment

Finland’s IT sector turns layoffs to its advantage

Bang & Olufsen takes control of sales data

Google Cloud chief targets enterprises and Amazon Web Services

DNB banks on outsourcing to save costs

Scandinavian Airlines CIO has high hopes for digital technologies

How a teacher’s skills taught IT team to cooperate at Swedish municipality Vara

contributed to the creation of 400 startups in Finland with coach-ing and seed funding. The network company has promised similar support this time around, but has yet to announce detailed plans.

Microsoft Mobile started a similar programme in Finland in sum-mer 2015. Polku, as it is known, meaning “a path”, offers retrain-ing, recruitment services, startup coaching and even potential funding. According to Microsoft, 94% of its employees who lost

their jobs have participated in the programme and it estimates more than 50% have found new employment, while almost 100 startups have received funding through the programme.

Wireless testing company Verkotan is one of these startups. Its six founders all worked at Microsoft when the company decided to shut its research and development unit in Oulu in 2014. The group acted quickly and acquired Microsoft’s mobile equipment testing laboratories to start Verkotan. It has now doubled its headcount to 12 employees.

Pertti Mäkikyrö, technical sales manager at Verkotan, found his way to the company through the Polku scheme after more than 20 years at Nokia and Microsoft. The programme supported him in joining the startup with a €60,000 grant and practical advice and coaching on running the new company.

“In the long run it is the practical support which is the most significant. If you can [be helped to] avoid mistakes at the start that is really important – those mistakes could even take down a new company,” said Mäkikyrö. “Of course, it is not a good thing for Finland that [Microsoft’s] mobile phone product develop-ment is being shut down, but, based on our experience, it is not the end of the world either.”

The digitisation effectThe Finnish cities most affected are also calling on the govern-ment for support. Espoo’s Antola said new measures are needed to reduce the impact of the latest layoffs. Among others, Espoo is collaborating with the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation, Tekes, which in 2015 launched a Digiboost scheme to support the hiring of digitisation experts.

“The aim is to enhance the ability of existing SMEs to benefit from digitisation,” said Antola. “Digiboost helps [companies] to hire one person or a whole team to drive this work. It pays half of their salary for a year.”

Tredea’s Välipakka agreed that many of the people facing unemployment could now be helped by the fast pace of digitisa-tion. In particular, Tampere has seen growing demand for soft-ware and mobile expertise from the more traditional manufac-turing industries where software and sensors are starting to play a major role.

No one in Finland is pretending the layoffs by Microsoft and Nokia aren’t damaging, with significant long-term effects, but Finns are doing their best to ensure they won’t all be negative. n

ANALYSIS

no one in finland is preTending The layoffs by microsofT and

nokia aren’T damaging

cw nordics November 2016 - January 2017 7

Home

Editor’s comment

Finland’s IT sector turns layoffs to its advantage

Bang & Olufsen takes control of sales data

Google Cloud chief targets enterprises and Amazon Web Services

DNB banks on outsourcing to save costs

Scandinavian Airlines CIO has high hopes for digital technologies

How a teacher’s skills taught IT team to cooperate at Swedish municipality Vara

Bang & Olufsen takes control of sales dataThe audiovisual equipment maker uses cloud-based channel management software for sales insight. Anne Morris reports

Denmark-based audiovisual manufacturer Bang & Olufsen has implemented cloud-based channel data manage-ment software, from Zyme, to get a clearer view of how

its sales channels perform. This follows the success of a new online business.

In 2012, The manufacturer launched B&O Play to create an online channel for the sale of products and services. In the early stages of developing B&O Play, the challenge was getting the product into the market and creating demand and awareness for the brand. After rapid growth, it now has around 30 distributors and 5,700 selling points worldwide.

However, it recently became clear the company needed to make sure its growth was sustainable. It realised it was critical to get an immediate grasp on its sales data to fully understand the channel and sustain its early success.

Making data part of the DNAKasper Frederiksen, a business analyst at B&O Play, said demand from the management team for greater visibility of the channel came from a desire to be a data-driven company. “We realised, as a lean but ambitious organisation, we needed to make

the most effective use of our time and resources to maximise our potential, and making data part of our DNA was the solution,” says Frederiksen.

B&O Play found it had limited visibility of day-to-day activities and performance of its distribution and retail channel. Although distributors were sending in monthly reports, the immediate account manager did not always share data from the partner with the wider team.

As a result, channel management decisions were based on incomplete partner data and there was little ability to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of channel marketing or sales activi-ties, or to plan effective support for the retail partners.

B&O Play wanted to keep pace with consumer demands, and needed to make all data available to support its wider team. Ultimately, it recognised it had become essential to invest in channel data management (CDM) that could provide a global view of the business.

Pilot studyTo ensure the highest possible acceptance of the CDM initiative throughout the business and at every level, the B&O Play team

CASE STUDY

cw nordics November 2016 - January 2017 8

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Editor’s comment

Finland’s IT sector turns layoffs to its advantage

Bang & Olufsen takes control of sales data

Google Cloud chief targets enterprises and Amazon Web Services

DNB banks on outsourcing to save costs

Scandinavian Airlines CIO has high hopes for digital technologies

How a teacher’s skills taught IT team to cooperate at Swedish municipality Vara

took the decision to include the entire business during the proof of concept stage. Five partners were invited to participate in the pilot study using actual business data.

This was the first time B&O Play had asked all of its distribu-tors to submit their reports via one system in one format. It was critical that any system deployed was easy to access, use and then integrate to ensure any change in process did not reduce the success of the initiative. Although some regions proved to be harder to get data from than Europe or the US, for example, feedback from distributors about the new approach to CDM was positive.

The proof of concept stage enabled the company to pro-mote the benefits of taking a data-driven approach to internal

operations, sales and marketing, and to encourage all depart-ments to use channel intelligence to make better decisions.

B&O chose a Zyme service following a competitive supplier review process. Zyme’s software was seen as the most compre-hensive system, offering an intuitive, customisable interface to suit each user’s needs. B&O Play also identified it as the best sup-plier from a features and functionality perspective, in addition to the level of knowledge and consultancy the Zyme team offered with channel data management.

Rapid implementation of CDM software“It was clear from the outset that investing in Zyme would not only provide us with an IT solution. It would also provide us with

CASE STUDY

JEPP

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cw nordics November 2016 - January 2017 9

Home

Editor’s comment

Finland’s IT sector turns layoffs to its advantage

Bang & Olufsen takes control of sales data

Google Cloud chief targets enterprises and Amazon Web Services

DNB banks on outsourcing to save costs

Scandinavian Airlines CIO has high hopes for digital technologies

How a teacher’s skills taught IT team to cooperate at Swedish municipality Vara

a professional partner that would share best practices and help us get the most from our channel data. Its commitment to col-laboration, as well as the continuous development of new ser-vices and solutions, was also important,” says Frederiksen.

The success of the pilot study meant that the time between the decision to invest in Zyme and the first phase of the initial roll-out was minimal, and completed by the end of March 2016. The implementation of all other partners across the globe was a gradual process that ran until the end of May 2016.

Frederiksen says there were challenges getting partners fully on-board. “It’s fair to say encouraging partners to adapt to the new format for data recording required persistence, and that inspiring internal teams to see the value in new ways of working was challenging, but it’s been a positive journey overall,” he adds.

Improving channel visibilitySix months after the completion of the implementation, B&O Play now has access to a single global dashboard that has become the foundation for creating much improved channel visibility. In addition, it has enabled the company to focus its sales team on driving sales opportunities instead of spending time gathering and analysing inconsistent data.

“We have only seen the tip of the iceberg,” says Frederiksen. “Having the right data and facts is becoming more important, and is particularly true in the world of audiovisual products, where technology and consumer demand moves at such a fast pace.”

B&O Play says it has no doubt this investment will bring value to the organisation, and plans are in place to include more retailers. n JE

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CASE STUDY

cw nordics November 2016 - January 2017 10

Google seems intent on spending 2016 reminding enter-prise CIOs that it is not just the Amazon, Microsoft and IBM clouds they should be considering when working out where to move their on-premise workloads.

The search giant formally kicked off this process in late 2015 when it enlisted the help of VMware co-founder and Google board member Diane Greene to oversee the running of its new-look cloud division.

Although the company has a play in both the cloud software and infrastructure services markets, thanks to Google Apps and the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) respectively, these ventures had previously been looked after by different parts of the business.

That was until the powers that be at Google decided to give one team overall responsibility for all the company’s cloud businesses from a product, engineering, marketing and sales perspective, and Greene was put at the helm.

Better integratedIn a blog post at the time, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the restructure would help the company’s cloud initiatives become better integrated and co-ordinated. It was hoped this would put it on course to win a larger share of the overall cloud market.

Since then, Google has gone on to announce high-profile cloud contract wins with the likes of music-streaming service Spotify, which was swiftly followed by reports that suggested Apple had joined Google’s growing roll-call of users.

While adoption of Google Apps has been steadily rising within enterprises in recent years, it has taken a little longer to get large

Google Cloud chief targets enterprises and AWSDiane Greene, vice-president of Google Cloud, tells Caroline Donnelly how the internet giant intends to win over the enterprise market and give Amazon Web Services a run for its money

INTERVIEW

HOME

cw nordics November 2016 - January 2017 11

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Editor’s comment

Finland’s IT sector turns layoffs to its advantage

Bang & Olufsen takes control of sales data

Google Cloud chief targets enterprises and Amazon Web Services

DNB banks on outsourcing to save costs

Scandinavian Airlines CIO has high hopes for digital technologies

How a teacher’s skills taught IT team to cooperate at Swedish municipality Vara

corporations to consider using Google to fulfil their infrastructure needs. This is an area Greene and her team are seeking to address.

So far, the GCP has followed a similar adoption path to Amazon Web Services (AWS). The com-pany initially focused on courting the startup com-munity before turning its attention to winning over the enterprise market.

But, as any company that has ever embarked on such an effort to widen the addressable market for a product will attest, it can be tricky to balance the needs of existing users with the demands of new customers, Greene tells Computer Weekly.

“I’ve been a board member since 2012, but when we decided to do a public cloud, Google hadn’t had to do enterprise fea-tures before,” she says. “So we started out as this terrific plat-form for startups, but some of our startups got quite big, and they scaled right up with us.”

As these startups grew into bigger companies, particularly in the case of social media site Snapchat, they found an increasing need to deal with enterprise-like regulatory issues. This, in turn, has helped inform Google about how to improve the enterprise-readiness of its cloud platform, says Greene.

“Now all those things are in place, we are ready for the big enterprises,” she adds.

Putting all its cloud business initiatives under one roof has played a major role in making the com-pany enterprise-ready. It has also made it easier for CIOs to get a hold on the full scope of its off-premise propositions, which go far beyond simply serving up business productivity tools and infra-structure services to enterprises, says Greene.

“We have a broad array of assets to bring to the enterprise table. Google Apps is just a better way for a company to work. It allows you to empower all your workers, and every-body’s collaborating, sharing data and having fewer meetings.

“We have a long history of research in artificial intelligence. We have all these APIs [application programming interfaces] that anyone can take advantage of, Chromebooks that – thanks to all their security and administration features – people can bring to

work, and Google Glass too.”The company’s cloud stack consists

of GCP, which Google reportedly uses to run all its own online services, and right on top is its online productivity suite, Google Apps.

Cloud giant Amazon Web Services has been making headway in recent years towards climbing the stack in a

similar way, through the roll-out of its productivity-focused tools, such as Webmail.

Google Apps is far more mature and, some might argue, bet-ter known than the AWS productivity offerings. Indeed, Gartner’s

INTERVIEW

❯Google is set to expand its global datacentre footprint as competition in the cloud

infrastructure services market heats up.

“we have a broad array of asseTs To bring To The

enTerprise Table”Diane Greene, GooGle

cw nordics November 2016 - January 2017 12

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Editor’s comment

Finland’s IT sector turns layoffs to its advantage

Bang & Olufsen takes control of sales data

Google Cloud chief targets enterprises and Amazon Web Services

DNB banks on outsourcing to save costs

Scandinavian Airlines CIO has high hopes for digital technologies

How a teacher’s skills taught IT team to cooperate at Swedish municipality Vara

2016 take on the market paints the cloud-based, enterprise pro-ductivity market as a two-horse race between Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365.

Synergy Research Group’s first-quarter look at the cloud infra-structure services market in April 2016 revealed that Google had quietly chalked up a year-on-year growth rate in excess of 100%.

Cloud leaderWith that in mind, and the adoption of GCP appearing to gather pace, how does Greene rate Google’s chances of closing in on AWS – and even dethroning it as the leader of the cloud market?

“Amazon was there first and it has a lot of features and a lot of partners,” she says. “We are bringing on those partners and features very quickly, and we have really ramped up our investment. I am pretty excited by how fast we are proving to move and grow.”

The company’s continuing ability to move and grow will be largely determined by how willing enterprises are to ditch their private datacentres and run their business in the public cloud, says Greene.

“People have huge, long leases on their datacentres, but I do think they now understand the public cloud is more secure than their datacentre,” she says. “For example, we have more than 600 people working full-time on security, and it’s hard to match that scale if you’re not in the business of providing a public cloud.

“Everybody will migrate to the cloud, but on what schedule is unclear. For some people it will take a very long time, while others are already fully there.” n

INTERVIEW

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cw nordics November 2016 - January 2017 13

Norway’s biggest bank, DNB, is also one of the world’s most cost-effective, according to its CIO, Liv Fiksdahl.

Fiksdahl is in charge of IT and operations, which makes up one-third of the bank’s cost base. She has taken a number of steps to deliver more IT for the money she spends. These include using IT to automate tasks within operations, and outsourcing to India.

According to Fiksdahl, the reason many organisations fail to meet cost-cutting targets is that they lack strong direction from competent management, and lack persistence. “We make sure to get the full benefits of all the cost-saving activities we launch,” she says.

One of the most important cost-saving measures DNB has taken within IT is to move nearly 500 full-time staff equivalents to outsourcing partners in India. “We knew we did not want to establish our own base in India, but we wanted to use big suppli-ers there who specialise in developing and maintaining the four different IT system areas we have outsourced.”

Increasing capacityMany of the DNB employees who previously performed these functions no longer work at the bank, says Fiksdahl. “Instead, we have built up purchaser competence, so we can buy services effectively, manage our suppliers, and make sure the different suppliers have good interaction with us and with each other.”

It took some time to get these interactions working properly, but now, less than two years on, the benefits are being realised, says

DNB banks onoutsourcing to

save costs Norwegian bank’s CIO

Liv Fiksdahl is saving money and digitising the business

by outsourcing to partners in India, reports Jenny Stadigs

INTERVIEW

HOME

cw nordics November 2016 - January 2017 14

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Editor’s comment

Finland’s IT sector turns layoffs to its advantage

Bang & Olufsen takes control of sales data

Google Cloud chief targets enterprises and Amazon Web Services

DNB banks on outsourcing to save costs

Scandinavian Airlines CIO has high hopes for digital technologies

How a teacher’s skills taught IT team to cooperate at Swedish municipality Vara

Fiksdahl. “We are increasing our capacity, we are shortening our time to market, and we can scale up and down much more dynamically,” she says.

The cost of IT services provided from India is 50–65% lower than in Norway, says Fiksdahl. “But we want to increase the volume, so instead of lowering the overall cost, we are buying more IT with the money we save.”

There are also about 150 Indian IT professionals working in Norway with DNB’s own 700 IT employees. “Some of the Indian consultants have moved here with their families, and some come for shorter periods,” says Fiksdahl.

Another measure the CIO has taken to reduce the cost-to-income ratio is to transfer IT operations from a Norwegian out-sourcing partner to an Indian one. “All our data and hardware is in a datacentre in Norway due to safety reasons, but it is mainly managed by Indian resources located in Norway and India,” she says.

Lean methodologyYet another move is to use lean methodology to make sure pro-cesses are performed optimally, says Fiksdahl. “The aim is to achieve a 25–30% reduction in costs,” she adds. “We have worked with lean for several years and will continue to work with it.”

The company’s costs would rise by 10-12% a year if it did nothing to cut them or keep them flat, says Fiksdahl. “The hourly cost for consultants increases, new licences and upgrades are required, new services for customers mean a bigger volume of IT operations, and the number of customers increases, which means the number of transac-tions in our systems grows,” she adds.

Keeping IT costs flatFiksdahl’s ambition is to keep DNB’s overall IT costs flat, to shift money from operations to development, and to get more IT for the money she spends. “Managing IT costs is a CIO’s most important task – in addition to digitising the business,” she says.

Outsourcing to India has helped both objectives, says Fiksdahl. “Using Indian outsourcing partners is not just important from a cost perspective. It also gives us power and capacity to digit-ise on a large scale, since we have a shortage of IT engineers in Norway,” she says. “If we didn’t have access to IT engineers from our Indian partners, we would not be able to make the

bank digital and offer our custom-ers self-service options.”

DNB is implementing digitisation projects in all parts of the organi-sation, all under Fiksdahl’s leader-ship. “During the past two years, we have cut the number of bank branches, which means we have to

INTERVIEW

❯DNB took inspirationfrom Danske Bank in

Denmark when creatingits latest payment app.

“indian ouTsourcing parTners give us The power and capaciTy

To digiTise on a large scale”liv FiksDahl, DnB

cw nordics November 2016 - January 2017 15

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Finland’s IT sector turns layoffs to its advantage

Bang & Olufsen takes control of sales data

Google Cloud chief targets enterprises and Amazon Web Services

DNB banks on outsourcing to save costs

Scandinavian Airlines CIO has high hopes for digital technologies

How a teacher’s skills taught IT team to cooperate at Swedish municipality Vara

manage customer interactions through the internet bank or via telephone,” she says. “We are working hard on changing all of our products so customers do not have to meet someone face-to-face to be able to buy products.”

Digitising loansOne of the top priorities at the moment is digitising the process of providing loans to millions of private customers.“The important thing is that we focus on digitising the processes that have the biggest volumes,” says Fiksdahl.

Another important and time-consuming digitisation project for DNB is to continue with the development of Vipps, the bank’s mobile payment application.

“We have had huge success with this application, which two million Norwegians now use to make payments with their mobile phone numbers,” she says. “We are working on value-added services, and on offering Vipps to corporate customers.”

At the start of this year, Fiksdahl created what she calls “the digital floor” – 100 temporary workplaces and a batch of meet-ing areas at DNB’s headquarters in Oslo.

“Here we gather together all stakeholders in digitisation projects, both from IT and the business,” she says. “They sit together for a limited time, and we have five or six ongoing pro-jects at once. It becomes a melting pot with great dynamics and co-operation, and speeds up the digitisation projects.”

The digital floor has become increasingly popular with DNB’s staff, and Fiksdahl is clearly very proud of her creation. “It is my baby,” she says. n

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Fiksdahl is looking to further develop Vipps, DNB’s popular

mobile payment app

cw nordics November 2016 - January 2017 16

The airline industry has changed significantly in the past two decades, with the introduction of budget airlines and an increasingly demanding digital customer base. The latter is also what attracted Mattias Forsberg to

take on the CIO position at Scandinavian Airlines (SAS).“The airline industry is interesting in that it is heavily depend-

ent on IT. The industry has been an early adopter of digital busi-ness processes, and SAS has been one of the leaders in it. Many [current systems] come from development inside SAS,” says Forsberg, who began working with the company in January 2016. “We are at the point where we need to focus on developing SAS for the future, and digitisation is a very important part of that.”

SAS is the largest airline in Scandinavia. It plans to invest around SEK500m (£44m) in digital transformation initiatives over the next few years. It is a new phase for SAS, which previously shifted its IT focus largely to cut costs, as it was on the brink of bank-ruptcy in 2012. Cost reduction remains a priority, but with SAS now on more stable ground, Forsberg has introduced an IT strat-egy focused on replacing legacy systems and increasing the capa-bilities of the airline’s digital products and digital innovation.

“The importance SAS puts on digital innovation is one of the reasons I joined its management team. We aim to make the whole process efficient and transparent and create new systems for our customers to make their life easier,” says Forsberg.

“We need to be able to capture the benefits of new technolo-gies. Digitisation will affect the airline industry for a long time to come,” he adds.

SAS sets sights high with digital innovationThe CIO of Scandinavian Airlines, Mattias Forsberg, talks to Eeva Haaramo about how digital technologies are enhancing customer experiences and transforming the airline business and the wider travel industry

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Editor’s comment

Finland’s IT sector turns layoffs to its advantage

Bang & Olufsen takes control of sales data

Google Cloud chief targets enterprises and Amazon Web Services

DNB banks on outsourcing to save costs

Scandinavian Airlines CIO has high hopes for digital technologies

How a teacher’s skills taught IT team to cooperate at Swedish municipality Vara

Defined performanceWorking in a consumer business is not new for Forsberg, who was awarded the title of “Swedish CIO of the year” in 2013 while working at state-owned Swedish alcohol retailer Systembolaget.

Prior to this, he gained business experience as a consult-ant in business transformations and working with startups. Consequently, Forsberg sees his broad understanding of business as a key strength. He says IT, like any organisation, should always have clearly defined key performance indicators (KPIs).

“It is not rocket science, but it does take a lot of time. It is impor-tant to start with clear KPIs so you can then focus on your improve-ment areas,” he says.

Forsberg spent his first three months at SAS interviewing every-one working in IT or with IT in busi-ness functions to learn what works in the company and where the pain points lay. Now SAS is start-ing to implement the necessary changes to better serve the 28 million passengers it transports annually.

One of these is increased transparency. Forsberg is a strong advocate for creating transparent processes. He sees this as particularly crucial to organisations that are highly dependent on outsourcing, such as SAS. “We have a very small internal IT

organisation, and most of the staff work in business IT functions, close to the business,” says Forsberg.

Furthermore, SAS’s internal IT team of 72 people works in infrastructure, service management and governance in close co-operation with the company’s major service provider partners – Tata Consultancy Services, CSC and Amadeus – and a group of

other suppliers.These partners are used to boost

SAS’s digital innovation capabilities. Forsberg believes it is a good model – the internal team brings airline industry experience, while the part-ners have deeper knowledge in the latest technologies. “The next step is to broaden the scope for innovation to the whole company and imple-ment a way of working with external parties and the vibrant startup com-munities in Stockholm and Silicon Valley,” he says.

No need for digital strategySAS has always been an early adopter in digitisation. In 1965, it became the first airline to use the electronic booking system Sasco (SAS computer system). However, IT is far from a support function today, which is why Forsberg believes it can help a cre-ate company-wide digital culture. “You don’t need a digital strat-egy,” he says. “Digitisation is about making all operations more

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“you don’T need a digiTal sTraTegy. digiTisaTion is abouT

making all operaTions more digiTal – iT needs To be inTegraTed

in all sTraTegies”Mattias ForsBerG, sas

cw nordics November 2016 - January 2017 18

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Editor’s comment

Finland’s IT sector turns layoffs to its advantage

Bang & Olufsen takes control of sales data

Google Cloud chief targets enterprises and Amazon Web Services

DNB banks on outsourcing to save costs

Scandinavian Airlines CIO has high hopes for digital technologies

How a teacher’s skills taught IT team to cooperate at Swedish municipality Vara

digital. It cannot be the responsibility of one person. Digital needs to be integrated in all strategies.”

Often, this approach is accompanied with a transformation project, as processes and technologies must be rebuilt to enable digital business models. Forsberg advises setting a clear goal and creating a holistic transformation plan, but one which takes into account that technologies and priorities will change over time.

“Transformation takes three to four years. You cannot plan in detail for such a long time frame,” he says.

Due to the length of transformation processes, Forsberg also likes to start small. Typically, this means tweaking customer inter-faces where even small improvements can offer immediate ben-efits. For example, SAS released a beta version of its revamped online services in August 2016, and is now collecting feedback from customers about the touch-optimised user interface.

SAS is also in the process of moving away from legacy systems and ensuring its IT architecture is robust enough for digital inno-vations. This includes improving data quality, as it should be a key issue for IT to make sure applications and data are not created in separate silos, says Forberg.

Personalised travel experienceData is a major ingredient in digital innovation at SAS. In early 2016, the airline launched a unit called SAS Labs, with the spe-cific focus of improving customer service and simplifying cus-tomer interaction through modern digital technologies.

“If you look a few years into the future, we will most likely know so much about travellers and what they like that we could create a

personalised travel experience – and not only when they are trav-elling, but for services around travelling,” says Forsberg.

SAS Labs has developed the online platform and integrated upgraded features into the SAS mobile app. The company is pro-totyping electronic bag tags, which could be managed through the app instead of paper.

The airline is also experimenting with open application pro-gramming interfaces (APIs) and chatbots to expand its customer service to where customers spend most of their time.

The aim is to make the airline’s digital channels interactive and cognitive so they can understand a user’s natural language and answer their questions automatically. This is being trialled with chatbots in Facebook Messenger and voice controls with Amazon Echo.

However, digitisation is not only transforming the customer experience. Forsberg believes the internet of things (IoT) and robotics will further transform the industry as sensor technolo-gies and robotics start to take on processes in and outside the aircraft, such as luggage handling.

SAS is also looking into the potential of 3D printing for the main-tenance of its fleets. The most futuristic visions see the company investigating autonomous, pilotless flights.

Forsberg says there will always be some need for human inter-action, but change is inevitable.

“Digital transformation is not different from business [any more]. You need to define how to transform the business and capture more opportunities through digitisation. Companies in all industries need to change,” he says. n

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cw nordics November 2016 - January 2017 19

Mia Forsäng is a prime example of the significance of people skills in IT leadership. In five years with Swedish municipality Vara, the teacher-turned-CIO was able to transform the organisation’s IT

and earn it a nomination for Sweden’s IT municipality of the year.Becoming CIO for the 15,700-resident municipality came as

a complete surprise to Forsäng. At the time, in 2010, she had worked as Vara’s education development manager and had previ-ous experience as a teacher, not in IT.

“One day, my manager came to me and said, ‘I have a new job for you: CIO of Vara’. I just turned around on my heels and said, ‘That’s too much, no’,” Forsäng recalls with a smile. “But he said it wasn’t a question, it was an order, and that I would start tomor-row. I was the CIO from that day on.”

Major challengeForsäng admits the role was a major challenge to take on, but she used her strong teaching and project management skills to compensate for a lack of experience in IT.

And her strategy succeeded. In 2015, Vara became the first municipality in Sweden to roll out fibre broadband to all its resi-dents and businesses.

Forsäng believes the key to success for the fibre broadband pro-ject was giving all her team members responsibility, and motivat-ing people to cooperate across the municipality.

“We make a good team when everybody works towards the same goal,” she says. “We have good communication between the politicians and everybody working at Vara. A few years ago,

Teacher’s skills taught IT team to cooperate

After moving on to pastures new, Mia Forsäng, former CIO at Swedish municipality Vara, tells Eeva Haaramo how she used her

people skills to transform the organisation’s IT department

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Editor’s comment

Finland’s IT sector turns layoffs to its advantage

Bang & Olufsen takes control of sales data

Google Cloud chief targets enterprises and Amazon Web Services

DNB banks on outsourcing to save costs

Scandinavian Airlines CIO has high hopes for digital technologies

How a teacher’s skills taught IT team to cooperate at Swedish municipality Vara

a lot of residents and businesses moved out of Vara. [The politicians] knew something had to be done and saw digitisation as very important to the municipality’s future. We thought that if we gave fibre to everyone, new companies would want to come here. Now Vara is growing.”

Forsäng’s mantra from the start was to accept that she didn’t have all the answers, and needed to ask a lot of questions as well as listen to both her team and users of their services. In Vara, this meant more than 1,500 peo-ple employed by the municipality.

Setting a common goalFor Forsäng, the first problem to tackle was how to make the IT department work better as a unit. Everyone in the 14-member IT team was focused on their own individual duties without any real coordination.

Forsäng began to change this by encouraging open communica-tion and giving the team a common goal – practically an ultima-tum – implementing a new IT platform.

“I discussed with my employees how we needed to change the plat-form,” she says. “If we weren’t able to work together as a team, the work would all be outsourced.”

The IT team was given 18 months to solve its internal problems and implement the shift from Novell to

a Microsoft environment, and they pulled through. The new platform was successfully deployed in 2012, alongside Windows 7 for all Vara’s employ-ees and students in the municipality. At the time, the change resulted in faster logins and more effi-cient operations. The municipality has now transi-tioned to Windows 10.

“It’s a lot of effort to change how people work,” says Forsäng. “My hardest project [the platform change] came right at the start, but it did so much good for the municipality. After [the project’s success], the politicians said we needed to put more investment in digitisation.”

Double nominationAnd the project’s success was not just recognised locally. Forsäng says the platform project and, later, the municipality’s fibre broadband launch, were probably a factor in Vara being nominated for Sweden’s best IT municipality in 2015. In the same year, Forsäng was nominated for Swedish CIO of the year.

During her time at Vara, Forsäng began to appreciate her per-spective as an IT outsider, and believes it benefited the munici-pality. She openly acknowledged the expertise of her employees and made sure they felt included in the decision-making process. But although this motivated the team, it was tough to start with.

INTERVIEW

❯CIO of Bank Norwegian discusses how Indian

outsourcing partners help her to keep costs down and

digitise the business.

“if we weren’T able To work TogeTher as a Team, The work

would all be ouTsourced”Mia ForsänG, vara Municipality

cw nordics November 2016 - January 2017 21

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Editor’s comment

Finland’s IT sector turns layoffs to its advantage

Bang & Olufsen takes control of sales data

Google Cloud chief targets enterprises and Amazon Web Services

DNB banks on outsourcing to save costs

Scandinavian Airlines CIO has high hopes for digital technologies

How a teacher’s skills taught IT team to cooperate at Swedish municipality Vara

“They didn’t like me at the beginning and thought ‘Why is she here?’ One day, one of the technicians came to me and said, ‘We have been talking a lot about you in the cafeteria, and how you don’t know much about IT’,” says Forsäng.

“But then he added, ‘We think that is good. We have to talk to you like we would to a customer, and you listen to all of us before you make a decision’. The engineers felt they had learned a lot about how to speak with customers.”

Forsäng considers this a major suc-cess, because the value of listening to customers is the biggest lesson she has learned as a CIO. It doesn’t mat-ter how good a system or service is if it doesn’t meet the demands and needs of its users, she says.

Consequently, Vara’s IT team now meets regularly with various users, ranging from teachers to elderly care staff, to hear about the IT services and equipment they need and want to use.

Valuing in-house experienceAlso, Forsäng kept Vara’s IT entirely in-house. This includes a service desk, which all IT team members take turns to operate to gain a better understanding of the practical problems that users experience.

After Vara’s fibre project was completed, Forsäng felt it was time for a new challenge. So, in August 2016, she left to become

a digitisation-focused business developer at Svenska Stadsnät, a fibre network provider and subsidiary of Sweden’s largest tel-ecoms operator, TeliaSonera.

“My role is to work with municipalities and companies to find out what they will need in future,” says Forsäng. “I am trying to build a bag and put into it everything a municipality needs [for dig-

itisation]. It could be fibre, but it could also be digital services for healthcare, schools or the internet of things.”

Forsäng says the fast pace of digiti-sation can be particularly challenging for smaller municipalities. While they might believe embracing digitisation is the way forward, more investment in IT might mean not hiring more teach-ers or healthcare staff.

But the Swedish government is moving in the right direction. By 2020, its target is for 90% of Sweden’s population to have access to 100Mbps broadband. The government has also adopted the mantra “digital first” to empha-sise the significance of digitisation in local government.

Forsäng says this will help drive change in municipalities and stop them seeing IT as only a support function.

“The new IT trend is not to look at just one thing in a municipal-ity, but to work with e-healthcare, with e-learning in schools and e-services for citizens,” she says. “You have to be brave and try new things, because if you are not willing to go digital, you will be left out in the future.” n

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“you have To be brave and Try new Things, because if you are noT willing To go digiTal,

you will be lefT ouT”Mia ForsänG, vara Municipality