Boosting Ownership and Agility: One Nordic’s Leap to IFS Cloud

One Nordic, a leader in Sweden’s electrical infrastructure, recently undertook a major migration from IFS Applications 10 to the IFS Cloud platform. Serving top utility companies, municipalities, and industrial sectors, One Nordic manages essential infrastructure services, ensuring electricity delivery across Sweden. With over 1600 users and regional offices throughout the country, the company aimed to shift to a fully cloud-based model that would bring greater agility, configurability, and a sharper focus on customer-centric services.

In this interview, Åse Petersén, IT Director, and Anders Gustafsson, Solution Architect at One Nordic, discuss the journey to cloud-readiness, their collaboration with IT partner Cegeka Sweden, and the organizational impact of owning their digital infrastructure transformation.

First of all, congratulations on the successful migration to IFS Cloud!

Åse Petersén: Thank you! We were one of the first to complete this migration with Cegeka Sweden, and we pushed the ‘go-live’ button mid-October. I’m incredibly proud of what our team and the people at Cegeka have achieved, and all of that in a little under a year.

How did the collaboration go?

Åse Petersén: It was excellent. I believe in working with a partner rather than just a supplier, and Cegeka truly exemplifies that partnership ethos. They prioritize close cooperation, and as a customer, you feel that commitment. Their offshore team Inivos in Sri Lanka was also a delight to work with—with excellent technical as well as social skills. Of course, every IT project has challenging moments, but working through those with a dedicated partner made all the difference.

“Cegeka prioritizes close cooperation, and as a customer, you really feel that commitment.”

Åse Petersén, CIO, One Nordic

This might be a bit of an odd question, but I noticed your title isn’t the typical CIO or IT Director. Can you explain?

Åse Petersén: Yes, my full title is "Manager of IT & Business Process Development," which is quite a mouthful! More importantly, it reflects how our IT team functions here at One Nordic. We’re not a traditional IT department: we’re deeply embedded in the business. This alignment means we're not focused on technology for technology's sake, but on creating functional, impactful services that support our business goals. I’m committed to ensuring that our IT work brings real, measurable value to the organization, not just providing support.

Was this close alignment with the business side a key factor in the decision to migrate to IFS Cloud?

Åse Petersén: Two years ago, I recognized that to effectively address our changing needs and those of our customers, we had to migrate to IFS Cloud. Our initial workshops validated this: if we wanted to sustain our competitive edge—and we pride ourselves on our expertise—this migration was the next step.

“Our primary motivator for migrating to IFS Cloud was gaining a customer-controlled ‘build space.”

Anders Gustafsson, Solution Architect, One Nordic 

Anders Gustafsson: While the cloud offers well-known advantages like scalability and cost-efficiency, our primary motivator was gaining a customer-controlled ‘build space.’ This shift empowers us to fully own the development process, enabling us to collaborate with partners like Cegeka to help us enhance this solution.

We now have greater control over configurations and customizations through low-code options, which significantly boosts our agility as well as our time-to-market. In the past, any request for customization meant waiting for IFS to review it, a process that could stretch on for months. With IFS Cloud, we’ve removed that frustration, allowing us to respond to our needs in real time.

Could you provide an example of how this flexibility is already benefiting you?

Anders Gustafsson: Our work directly supports the end consumers of our clients—utility companies, municipalities, and various industries—so we’re constantly influenced by their needs. For instance, a customer might always need real-time access to specific data, such as technician schedules or detailed technical information. With IFS Cloud, we can seamlessly add and expose fields through APIs directly to our clients’ platforms or apps, streamlining the flow of information. 

“Sometimes, the key to innovation in customer service is simply about delivering the right data at the right time through the right channels.”

Anders Gustafsson, Solution Architect, One Nordic 

Are there other ways IFS Cloud has helped streamline your operations?

Åse Petersén: Most of our client interactions occur through integrations, and standardizing these interfaces has been a game changer for us. Take technician dashboards, for example. Each customer has their own unique processes, but we can’t expect our technicians to navigate all those variations; that’s not their role. They need a clear, uniform dashboard regardless of the underlying system, allowing them to focus solely on their core tasks. This standardization enables them to work faster and more efficiently, eliminating the distractions of juggling multiple software environments.

The migration was completed on time and within budget. Looking back, is there anything you’d do differently today? 

Anders Gustafsson: If I could change anything, I would allow for a bit more time for the project. Migrating is like changing the engine of an airplane mid-flight—it’s a complex process that affects the entire organization and demands considerable time and energy from everyone involved. I believe we all underestimated that aspect to some extent. It’s a big change for any organization to go through, and it requires time and proper change management.

Thank you both for sharing your insights, and best of luck with One Nordic’s ongoing journey toward greater agility!