Assisting Haugaland Kraft with IT strategy

Omega IT Architects will assist Haugaland Kraft in developing the company's new IT strategy. Haugaland Kraft has been through, and is undergoing, big changes. The new IT strategy will help to draw attention to everything that must be done by specifying objectives and presenting a plan to achieve them.

“Our aim is to maintain our position as the preferred power and broadband provider in Haugalandet. A good IT strategy will assist us in achieving our goals. Omega IT Architects will help us with this strategy,” says Project Manager, Torleiv Fossum, in Haugaland Kraft.

Haugaland Kraft wants to be proactive in relation to the continuous changes occuring in the market and the operating conditions the company is facing from regulatory bodies. The new IT strategy will contribute to the more flexible management of the various challenges that the company is facing, such as the move to automatic readings of electricity consumption for all customers.

Challenged by management

When Haugaland Kraft’s IT department was challenged by management to devise a new IT strategy for the concern, they chose to engage Omega IT architects to assist them in their efforts.

“The introduction of the new IT strategy entails an intervention in the employees’ work and requires a great deal of involvement from the employees. A willingness and ability to involve the organization in the project and the ability to get employees invovled in the process, were qualities we looked for when we were selecting a supplier. These are qualities we found in Omega IT Architects. We also recognized that it as an advantage that the supplier has background knowledge of the energy market, as demonstrated by Omega IT Architects’ Department Manager, Arne Jon Myskja. This gave us a flying start,” says Fossum.

Arne Jon Myskja is very pleased with the assignment, which came eighteen months after he first had the opportunity to introduce Omega IT Architects to Haugaland Kraft. IT has evolved from being a tool for effective management, to becoming a strategic tool, as more and more business processes are digitized.

Close involvement of employees

“Major changes in the market and in regulatory frameworks make it important to define key principles of IT deliveries moving forward, to ensure that emphasis is placed on the right factors. IT is an integral part of almost all business operations. In order to be better prepared in the fight for clients, the proper application of technology is essential,” says Myskja.

In order to avoid a long and exhausting process, the mapping of the project in Haugaland Kraft took place over a period of just one-and-a-half months. Interviews with 37 employees in Haugaland Kraft were conducted in the space of one week. The goal of the interviews was to identify the factors that were important to each employee, why the various issues were important, and how they believed the new IT strategy could assist in ensuring that the targets could be achieved.

“We were met with a good and positive engagement. Although there were various initial perspectives, we have only experienced a positive and constructive cooperation with everyone that was involved in the process. We have received many good suggestions, which were in turn structured and processed in a model that was developed by Omega IT Architects. The results from the process have provided us with a picture of what Haugaland Kraft must address and the project has constructed an overall plan for this action,” says Myskja.