Coor has enjoyed stable and high growth since starting up in 1998, and 2007 was no exception.
Continuous improvement
Every year, Coor’s objective and ambition is the same—to be able to offer the market’s best, highest value-added service. We want to be the natural first choice for customers and employees in our sector, but obviously, this implies challenging standards. Even though we are proud of what we’ve achieved, we can never just sit back.
We’ve got to remain innovative, continuously improving and developing our service provision and our offering. We have to be skilled at exploiting economies of scale and synergies, but also exchanging and spreading best practice systematically through our organisation. Our proprietary quality management system (Universum) and FM training packages for managers and staff are key tools in these efforts. In 2008, we will also introduce a new working method for customer-based enhancements, which hopefully, will generate a constant flow of proposals for improvement—large or small—to benefit our customers.
The key to success
Our new improvement process will involve all staff. In many cases it is in actual service provision—in our encounter with the customer—where good ideas are generated. Clearly, the key to our success lies in our capacity to try to understand our customers’ needs at every moment, and to satisfy them optimally. Our staff have a lot of energy, which never ceases to impress me. Without motivated staff with deep understanding of our business and their role in helping our customers to progress, we wouldn’t be able to develop our provision.
Challenges
High growth is forecast for the Nordic market for outsourced FM, and the IFM (integrated facilities management) market that Coor addresses, is expected to grow even faster. That’s why we’re putting our main focus on actively servicing the market and securing new business. In early 2008 we introduced a new, more country-based organisational structure so we can better exploit the differing opportunities on each Nordic market.
For a growth company like Coor, the supply of management talent is also a business-critical issue. To safeguard our capacity to develop and nurture new business continually, we are working actively on searching, selecting and developing new staff, mainly in business development and operational development, as well as line management positions. These efforts have been highly successful, and will be intensified in 2008. With its highly functional operations and competitive offerings, Coor has secured strong market positioning. In combination with a high-growth market, this means the company’s future outlook is very positive.
Stockholm, Sweden, April 2008.
Mats Jönsson
President & Group CEO
