According to Georg Linden, Innovation Manager at Coor Sweden, Innovation has always been an important part of Coor’s development work for its Facility Management solutions, and Coor’s smart solutions are what differentiate Coor from its competitors.
“Our innovation work is a major competitive advantage and makes us stand out in the sector. Our primary task is to meet our customers’ needs, and smart solutions allow us to improve our delivery significantly,” he explains.
Finding great new solutions and collaboration partners is challenging and time-consuming. This is why Coor has collaborated with various external parties for a number of years. One example is our collaboration with incubators such as Ignite Sweden, where start-ups or scale-ups are matched with larger businesses. The European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) is another example of a collaborative partnership where smaller companies are helped to identify new markets. Georg regularly meets with representatives of external partners, who are considered critical to Coor’s innovative work.
“Our partners help us identify smart solutions, so that we can focus on testing, packaging and then presenting them to our customers to show the solutions can be useful,” he explains.
“Sometimes even the customer itself doesn’t initially see the need for a particular solution, which is later shown to make their work significantly easier,” he continues.
Start-ups and scale-ups are key to Facility Management innovation
Christian Dahl is one of Coor Norway’s two Innovation Managers, and he agrees that external partners are critical to Coor’s innovation work.
“In Norway, we work closely with start-up organizations. One example is TheFactory, which focuses on proptech companies, and which has led to several successful collaborations,” he explains.
“Coor has an innovative culture that always seeks to ensure the best experience for our customers. In order to do this, we need to take a systematic approach and work on innovation at all levels, and we’re good at this. The user always comes first,” he continues.
Innovation increases efficiency
In Norway and Sweden, Coor hosts innovation forums with certain customers, such as Norwegian oil and gas company Equinor. The forums involve collaborative discussions about the aim of the services, how existing smart solutions can be developed and upcoming trends.
“This is an effective approach that provides us with an overview and where we can see what adjustments need to be made, ranging from increasing productivity to making the company a more attractive employer,” he explains.
External parties are a part of Coor’s innovation work, but Georg and Christian both emphasize that the staff working on the contracts play an important role in transferring knowledge and communicating the customer’s problems and needs.
“We try to be very responsive to customers’ needs, and it’s important that we stay alert and question things. If we notice challenges in our customers’ business, we need to highlight this and take it further internally so that we can produce effective, tailor-made solutions. We want our customers to feel that Coor and our smart solutions make a difference, and that we make their everyday life easier,” Georg concludes.
Photo: Erik Burås / STUDIO B13
