It’s good to have a partner who shows you what you don't know.

Hans Blomgren

Sandvik Systems Development AB, Sweden, President

IT systems at Sandvik are hugely varied. You can name almost any technology, any platform, any package, and we’ve got it – somewhere in the group. Our main platforms are mainframe, ISeries and Windows. SAP is expanding and increasing, so is Java and WebSphere. There is a long tradition in mainframe, but gradually, for functional reasons, we are moving to new platforms. But it’s important to know that it’s only for functional reasons, not for technological reasons. We don’t primarily convert from old to new technologies just because of the technology; change should be based on a functional need.

Sandvik consists of three business areas, all based on materials and materials technology, but each drives their own individual business. That means that the businesses are different, the business strategies are different, and as a result of that, IT strategies are also different. And we service all of it; we have a very varied portfolio. Our objective is to consolidate – fewer applications, fewer platforms.

We, Sandvik Systems Development AB (SSD), are an independent service company, a separate legal entity, serving all of Sandvik, and only Sandvik – we have no external clients. We are traditional to the extent that we do all kinds of typical IT, like business development, process development, project management, pre-studies, IT architecture, application development, application management. In brief, we offer a full range of IT-related services.

Because of our position in Sandvik, we are very close to the business. In many cases we know the business better than anyone else, so we have a tremendous advantage over any external supplier. But we are not a monopoly. Primarily we are connected through our offers, through the systems we maintain, and we often deal with business challenges in the early stages and support them with IT solutions. So our advantage is that we are a part of the business challenge. And we can supply our customers with the right IT solutions. The challenge of course for an internal service provider is not to become ‘fat and lazy’.

One aspect of my job is to make sure that what I know about Sandvik’s business and its challenges, through my many contacts within our parent company, is fed back into this organization and translated into actions that we, in SSD, can take.

The other aspect is managing this growing company. We founded it five years ago, and since that time we’ve more than doubled our turnover, which of course is based on the needs of Sandvik, and Sandvik’s businesses have grown spectacularly. SSD’s task is maintaining quality, keeping customers satisfied, recruiting and finding business partners, and so on. We need to consolidate where it’s needed, innovate and go for business wherever it is. It’s been, and still is, a lot to manage.

Apart from Sweden, SSD has 11 subsidiaries, small units around the world, excluding Africa. All development is driven centrally from Sandviken, our HQ in Sweden; the centre of gravity is here. So there’s a need for our partners to be both local and global. And of course we benefit from partners who have a large geographical coverage and a huge backbone; partners who have the experience, as we need to draw on all types of resources and competences.

This is specifically where Sogeti has added value – this special combination of local presence and global coverage.

Sogeti is good in keeping its local presence, keeping the relationship strong with the right competences, the right people and the right structures in that local business. So when we’re running short of skills, we look for what we can draw from them. And it’s good to have a partner who we can draw on for specific extra resources and to show us what we did not know.

We are now in the third year of the contract with Sogeti. It was signed as a volume contract, and volumes have been exceeded. So we’ve had good times and so has Sogeti. Today, volumes are not central to our partnership discussions anymore. We talk about a number of initiatives like IT architecture, business intelligence solutions and testing.

We’ve even undertaken a joint recruitment initiative, offering people a job in testing with either Sogeti or Sandvik once they have successfully passed our trainee program. That’s a good example of the partnership in action. Sogeti and Sandvik are both very down to earth. We don’t like too many fancy presentations; we like to be ‘hands on’.

As for the future, the business prospect for Sandvik is continued growth, partly based on business cycles, but also on structural demand, on what Sandvik can offer customers. And that will drive the continued growth of IT. My biggest challenge is maintaining the growth and keeping the customer happy. And, at the same time, consolidate what should be consolidated.
Primarily we’re looking for partners who can continue to support us in our growth.

For the coming three to five years, the set up is likely to remain the same. Central initiatives and consolidation – those will continue to be the key aspects of our business. But we are aware of limitations; we are restricted by our own capacity today and by that of our partners. So we need to find an easier way to find access to IT capacity. This fact puts extra emphasis on the need for our partners to operate flexibly.

Another exciting prospect is the industrialization of innovation, how to apply IT solutions to Sandvik’s product development and offers. That is an area of big interest for Sandvik and for us, and a trend in which IT takes on a totally new role and goes with the products.

Sandvik has a strong belief in staying in close contact with our customers, to integrate their feedback immediately into our product development, to specify new service offerings, to make sure that the business develops. In that sense, the IT of tomorrow has much more to contribute to business than today.    

There may be a lot of tradition, history and pride in Sandvik, and at the same time there is a lot of new thinking, new ideas and competences, and people are flowing into Sandvik. These are very interesting times!