Advania Norway: Bringing clarity and efficiency to post-merger business processes

In recent years, Advania Norway has undergone a number of mergers and acquisitions. Due to differences in technology and processes, many of the acquired companies remained insufficiently integrated into the company.

At Advania, each country is given the autonomy to manage its own processes nationally. In 2021, Advania Norway acquired Visolit, an IT company with process owners spread across Norway and Sweden. The challenge was to restructure these processes and relocate them exclusively in Norway.

At the time, Advania Norway had identified its existing processes in SharePoint, manually documenting different process groups using text and illustration files. “The data showed that processes were often isolated,” says Meindert Kalma, Chief Process Officer, Advania Norway.

The business was being impacted on many levels. “There were delays in handovers between Sales and Project teams,” explains Kalma, “and access issues were linked to an increased risk of cyberattacks on data centers.”

The company recognized these issues, and knew it needed to react quickly. This meant strengthening its process management by establishing a well-defined, well-maintained and structured process architecture to improve overall efficiency.

This was all the more urgent since remote work had increased post-pandemic. “People are less likely to ask for help when they’re working from home,” says Kalma. “If you want processes to be followed remotely, you need them to be very clear and well-established.”

Digitalizing and reorganizing process management

In September 2022, Advania Norway launched a POC with the cloud version of ARIS, the business process analysis and management solution from Software AG. “I’ve worked with ARIS at previous companies,” says Kalma, “and I knew it was just what we needed to map and model our processes—and then make well-informed decisions to benefit the business.”

In December 2022, Advania Norway fully implemented ARIS with help from Software AG in Denmark. “Their technical expertise was crucial to get ARIS up and running quickly, as was the support of an IT team from Advania Iceland,” says Kalma.

To fully benefit from the digital precision and efficiency of ARIS, Advania Norway restructured its internal organization to help employees better manage and follow processes. Process owners were appointed to monitor and optimize process performance. They are supported by process sponsors, C-level managers who define the scope of each process and work with the process owners to resolve any issues.

Today, ARIS has been used to document 15 main processes across three process groups: management, value-adding and supporting processes. Around 260 models are now integrated in ARIS. And while most of the company’s processes have now been mapped, it’s an ongoing initiative. “We recently established a cyber defence department,” explains Kalma, “so there are always new processes that need to be mapped, monitored and improved.”

Tighter processes for enhanced security and cost efficiency

With ARIS, Advania Norway now has a clear view of its business processes and how they interact with each other. Using this information, it has implemented multiple changes to strengthen the business.

Increased cybersecurity: One key area of improvement has been better management of digital identities to increase cybersecurity. “ARIS has done a great job of showing us where access management was not working,” explains Kalma. “We realized that service personnel were often given temporary access to the customer environment, but their credentials were never deleted. Now, we have a strict access request process, with authorizations automatically expiring after a given period.” The result is that the number of hostile access points in the customer environment has been reduced, and customer satisfaction is much higher.

Sales efficiency: Sales contracts have also been enhanced thanks to insights provided by ARIS. Process optimization has allowed Advania Norway to standardize sales contracts and link them to a central sales catalogue, which is updated weekly with new services. This means customers benefit from all the latest offers, and the company processes its sales more efficiently.

Reduction in invoicing leakage: ARIS also highlighted some miscalculations in billings. “Because we now have a clear view of both our invoicing and maintenance systems, we were able to identify an underbilling issue that we couldn’t have detected previously.” Alerted to this anomaly, Advania Norway was able to rapidly resolve the issue and realign billing with the customer’s offer.

Scaling up process management—the green way

Potential for ESG reporting: Following a first year of process-driven improvements, Advania Norway is now looking to use ARIS in other areas of its business. “We’re particularly interested in the accelerator for sustainability,” says Kalma. “We think ARIS could transform the way we mine data for our ESG reports and help us provide customers with a better understanding of how the services they choose affect their environmental footprint.”

Mitigating risk: Risk and compliance is another focus for the future. In early 2024, Advania Norway is planning to launch a POC using ARIS to test compliance for ISO 9001, 14001 and 27001. Across these three standards, a large number of controls need to be performed to meet requirements and many are based on questionnaires. The idea is to use ARIS to automate the sending out of questionnaires and monitor processes so that compliance issues can be rapidly fixed.

Enhanced access management: The company is also interested in integrating ARIS with its HR system. “We’d like to synchronize employee roles with ARIS so we can define the relation between roles and persons,” says Kalma. This would enable a more dynamic role-based access management, ensuring people always have access to the tools they need while simultaneously strengthening overall security.

Process Maturity: The success of ARIS is being closely monitored by Advania Norway by assessing the maturity of different processes four times a year. The company’s goal is to achieve an average process maturity of 4.2 out of 5 by 2025.

“Everyone is much more aware of processes,” says Kalma, “and that has made us more agile as a company. It’s also made it easier to onboard the companies we’ve acquired in recent years.” Not surprisingly, there are plans afoot to continue the roll out within the Advania Group. “I recently showed our colleagues in Sweden and Iceland what we have achieved with ARIS,” says Kalma, “and they are very interested. Once we have more concrete data about the benefits, I know they will be as convinced as I am.”