COLLABORATION & COMMUNICATION: WORKING TOGETHER WITHOUT BOUNDARIES

Elajo is one of Sweden’s leading electricity, mechanical engineering and energy com¬panies, offering broad expertise and a knowledgeable staff of close to 900 employees. Since it was founded in 1958, the family business has experienced strong growth over many years and combines the proximity as well as the flexibility of a small company with the resources of a large one. In the vast majority of cases, the company is geographically very close to its customers as it has offices in 38 cities in Sweden. With its products and services, Elajo and its employees generate a yearly turnover of approximately SEK 900 million. The decision in favour of the long-term partner Konica Minolta for the update of their software and hardware as well as for the assignment of managed network services was just natural. The solutions ensure the new system provides the highest level of security while enabling very efficient and simplified workflows.

Unburdening internal IT departments through tailored services 

For Elajo’s business, it is exceptionally important to be able to focus on the needs of their customers. In today’s economy, underlying IT systems take on a decisive role in order to allow this. As more and more systems become connected and inter­nal as well as external business processes grow increasingly digital, companies need to be able to leverage the full potential of these technologies to stay competitive in their market and serve their customers with the highest levels of quality. A strong partner who knows its business and is able to take care of IT and the digitalisation of a company’s processes is especially crucial with a diverse and geographically spread company structure with 38 offices. “Managing our IT is at the core of our business and we want to limit the internal resources we invest here to a minimum. Hence, in order to be able to focus our resources and efforts on supporting our employees, our IT department turned to Konica Minolta, our long-established, proven partner,” Elajo’s CFO Olle Westerling explains. Through the close dialogue between the two companies before the start of the project, Konica Minolta gained an in-depth understand­ing of Elajo’s needs and was hence able to tailor the service to exactly the desired outcome, freeing up internal resources. “In many ways, it feels like Konica Minolta’s experts have become a part of our IT team,” Westerling added.

A single point of contact for managed network services 

In order to provide Elajo not only with a set of IT products but also with the solution it truly needs, Konica Minolta delivers a complete array of managed services. Konica Minolta’s experts proactively manage the company’s entire network: this covers hardware and IT management, including PCs, servers and the whole printing infrastructure, as well as software components such as security firewalls and conventional day-to-day office software. The services include real-time monitoring and patch­ing of the network and infrastructure as well as the continuous deployment of new software and hardware, ensuring the maxi­mum level of security to protect each office location. For Elajo, this procedure has the enormous advantage that the com­pany has one single point of contact for all topics concerning their network, as Konica Minolta is responsible for all issues concerning the IT network. With Konica Minolta harmonising the company’s IT set-up, new locations can now be easily integrated into the existing systems. The new locations receive an easy-to-implement rollout package of simple steps so they can be up and running in a fraction of the time a new set-up used to take.

At the construction site or in the office: making work seamless 

As an organisation, Elajo is on its path to taking advantage of the potential of digitalised work processes. Konica Minolta harmonised the company’s office software with the implemen­tation of Microsoft Office 365 across all locations and mobile devices. The project was planned and executed in very close collaboration between Konia Minolta’s experts and Elajo’s IT professionals, ensuring a perfect fit for the entire organisation. The implementation opens up a wide range of applications for mobile and remote work as well as communication; it is of exceptionally high value for employees who are constantly on the road or at construction sites. Access to new applications gives employees greater flexibility in how they work and how they interact with their peers, while simplifying the whole main­tenance and update process of the system. “Konica Minolta knows our business very well. Their solutions enable us to work remotely, for example, which significantly increases our overall efficiency. We can therefore focus on our core tasks and have to travel less, which means huge financial and environmental benefits for us,” says Olle Westerling.

Konica Minolta as trusted long-term partner for IT 

The projects with Elajo are a prime example of Konica Minolta’s complete focus on customer needs. As more of a solution provider than supplier of products, Konica Minolta makes sure to fully understand the business and the existing circumstances within the customer environment. Furthermore, Konica Minolta’s approach of remaining a universal service partner even after the implementation phase of the tailor-made systems defines the close relationships it has with its customers as well as the insights into their business processes and what they need in order to deliver the best possible solutions for their customers.