Software as leverage for growth
Digital development has brought about changed customer behaviors. This means virtually all companies—even traditional industrial companies—need to master the ability to develop value-creating software for their customers in order to be competitive. Helping companies achieve this is one of factor10's specialties.
For most companies, custom-developed and business-driven software is an untapped leverage. This insight has been a strong driving force for factor10 ever since it was founded 18 years ago.
– Sales is the bottleneck for almost all companies. When collaborating with clients, we repeatedly see software development becoming the decisive factor that opens this bottleneck and drives their entire business forward, says Per Rovegård, CTO at factor10.
A Blekinge company that recognized the need to invest in value-creating software early on is Roxtec International AB. Twelve years ago this multinational industrial company, known for its innovative sealing solutions for cable and pipe transits, began a significant transformation that contributed to a tripling of its turnover.
Software that drives sales
It all began with Roxtec identifying a need: customers had difficulty figuring out which combination of all their products to choose for a specific situation. Instead of trying to solve the problem by adding more salespeople or online material, Roxtec decided to use software. The choice of partner fell on factor10.
The first software released was Transit Designer™—a user-friendly and free tool that makes it easy for customers to choose the right sealing solution, resulting in time savings of up to an incredible 80 percent during the design process.
Transit Designer™ is still our absolutely biggest lead generator, we estimate that half of our sales come from it. In one way or another, this software is involved in almost all our product sales, says Mats Åhman, Head of Digital Solutions at Roxtec.
Business benefits in focus
Following the first success, Roxtec has continued to develop software together with factor10. Today, they have a software suite that helps designers, owners, installers, and operators collaborate safely and time-efficiently throughout the entire lifecycle of a facility.
– The trust that exists between Roxtec and factor10 is a key success factor. Mats doesn’t micromanage, he simply describes his vision and trusts us to turn it into reality, Per Rovegård says.
– I appreciate that factor10 so often contribute important insights and thoughts about business benefits that we should take advantage of. They’re a business partner as much as a software consultancy, Mats Åhman adds.
Experiment and start small
Mats is constantly identifying new customer needs to support with software. In addition, users have begun to request the possibility of using Roxtec's software in projects with completely different types of products and tasks. With factor10 as their partner, software as a subscription service has become an additional revenue stream for Roxtec.
Mats' advice to other companies facing the same transformation is to start small:
– First, you need a visionary who realizes how much can be done. But then you need someone who understands how small you can start and still deliver direct value for the user. And that’s something factor10 is very good at!
This text was orginially published as an editorial advert on di.se (Dagens Industri).