AF Gruppen
IQPLUS has worked side by side with AF Gruppen's teams providing different types of solutions and materials, from visual elements, design and development. Below can you find one of them, Nyskaperen.no, AF Gruppen's portal to gather good ideas for innovation.
About the client
AF Gruppen is a leading contracting and industrial group. The AF culture has been characterized by curiosity and a willingness to challenge the establishment. Their employees’ ability to dare to pursue their ideas is what has contributed to AF Gruppen’s present status as a leading industrial group that is often referred to as different and forward-looking.
The challenge
AF Gruppen saw that many employees came with ideas about new products, services or projects. It was tedious to compile emails with documents without a clear centralization. That´s why they decided to digitalize the information received and therefore facilitate the decision making about the viability of the process. Nyskaperen.no is AF’s tool to bring good ideas to fruition.
An additional challenge was that the official browser of corporate use was an older version Internet Explorer. Using the right last technologies needed to be particularly looked into in order to avoid future problems.
The solution
In the first phase, taking advantage of the latest solutions in the field of digital product prototyping and Agile methodologies, we carried out rapid prototyping of the ideas submitted by Nyskaperen. Prototypes produced by this process were then evaluated by potential users.
In the second phase, we started developing the application using the Agile methodology.
The process took 4 months before customer’s users started testing the product and giving feedback.
Following obsolete corporate infrastructure and guidelines is a hidden problem of digital transformation. It is an additional challenge as it may not allow to use last available technologies.
The result
Nyskaperen.no is AF Gruppen’s portal to gather good ideas for innovation. With the portal, you are enabled to realize your idea. They are convinced that some of the ideas will lead to separate start-ups supported by AF Gruppen. It takes a while to complete the questionnaire, but we believe this work forms the best basis for the idea’s way forward. When you complete the form, you receive a structured summary of your idea in a pdf form. The same report is sent to AF Gruppen and forms the basis for their assessment. As it takes a while to complete the questionnaire, the portal is not available for tablets and mobiles.
All serious contributions will be assessed in a structured manner. After the assessment, you may be told to continue working on the idea, or you may receive professional guidance and support. Others will receive sparring and funds to contribute to their idea being the right thing to move the industry forward. We’re also convinced that some of the ideas will lead to separate start-ups supported by AF Gruppen.
If your idea is something AF Gruppen wants to develop further, we will jointly determine the further rights and obligations for the partnership.
We are always learning and using the latest technologies on our projects if possible.
The Nyskaperen technology stack is:
- Node js, Express, i18n
- Cosmo dB and Mongodb
- HTML5, CSS3, Handlebars, jQuery
Conversation is one of our most important values and a habit we support at every stage of our development process. We use Slack for chat, Trello for planning, and Github for code reviews and discussion.
