OBOS is the largest housing developer in Norway and one of the largest in Scandinavia. With 2500 employees, managing over 5000 housing cooperatives, and spread over 250 000 houses, they've got a lot of different business processes to track, structure, and digitalize.

Hilde Rannem Rostad was hired to digitalize their economic functions in 2019. She quickly realized how everything was related to processes.

– My mission was to digitalize a great part of the organization. I quickly understood that it's all about processes and people, and about understanding the technology and how to use it in the best way. There's no way around working with processes, Hilde says.

Hilde was introduced to ShiftX through a colleague. As someone constantly on the hunt for new technology, she couldn't resist taking a closer look.

- When I saw this, I was very enthused. I like gadgets and new tech, but also because I saw it as a new way to work with processes.

Hilde explains how in large workshops, they would map out processes using yellow post-its, and afterward, a couple of Visio experts would sit down in a room to map up the results before presenting them. This is a very common way of working with processes, but you risk losing valuable input from the people involved.

- You had to be an expert to use Visio, and it wasn't something for the average Joe in the organization. It also wasn't given that the people that attended these workshops thought this was how the process really looked like, Hilde says.

Some tools, however, are easier to use and not limited to specialists, which increases collaboration and knowledge sharing so everyone sees the same picture. Hilde refers to ShiftX as such a tool.

- ShiftX creates a type of dynamic atmosphere, a type of cooperation. With ShiftX you can sit down together in the same workshop and map out the same picture. Nobody needs to do a job afterward. And it lowers the bar for wanting to change or play around with our processes, Hilde says.


OBOS handles about 500 000 incoming invoices each year, and accounting and invoice handling is a large part of what they do. When first mapping out this process in ShiftX, which had developed over several years, they noticed how it involved and affected others as well. 

Hilde explains how people got surprised during workshops, and suddenly asked “Is this how it really is? Do you really send it there? Do they have to see this?”. And that's when they began to see the possibilities for improvement using ShiftX.

-The interactions this system leads to are pretty unique, I think, Hilde says.

A typical scenario is for leaders and managers to seek alternative ways of working with processes when they want to make improvements. People affected by these changes are often not involved in the process, and this is where we see a strong use case and why we developed ShiftX. Hilde agrees, and says the following: 

-Among the things I like about ShiftX, which was one of the reasons we chose it, is this somewhat fluffy saying "to democratize the process work." ShiftX encourages a bottom-up approach by allowing those who participate in the process to suggest improvements.

In closing, Hilde comments that she now finds process work fun with ShiftX.

Watch Hilde speak at the ShiftX breakfast seminar in Oslo about how to take advantage of the possibilities in new technology. 

Director, Digitaization of financial services 

OBOS's approach to improving processes using ShiftX

Competing with the likes of Google and Amazon, Servebolt delivers hosting of websites and online stores to customers that need high speed and scalability. In their own words, they provide the fastest hosting in the world.

But, like many other companies selling technically complex services, they also meet the challenge of explaining their technically complex processes and services to their clients and employees in an understandable way.

Thomas Audunhus, Head of Product at Servebolt, says they’ve worked with processes and customer journeys for years and tested many different methods and tools that suited and stimulated their dynamic way of working.

“The question for us, to put it bluntly, has always been 

«How can we explain the non-nerdy things to the nerds, and the nerdy things to the non-nerds?»

 And the solution popped up with ShiftX and its straightforward and accessible way to collaborate on mapping out and visualizing any process,” says Thomas.

For Thomas and Servebolt, the key to working efficiently with their projects has always been good communication. And for them, good communication often means the ability to explain complex processes and technical implementations understandably.

“And visualization has been key in this communication. But we didn’t have 

 standard for doing this. We used different models and tools, and visualization ended as a supplement and not a core activity. That’s why we implemented ShiftX throughout our company, to have this shared language of how we visualize our processes”, Thomas says.

In two days, with four meetings in total, they had implemented ShiftX as their new tool for visualizing processes and projects.

Now they start every new project with collaborative workshops in ShiftX.

“We’ve now got a visualization language that doesn’t demand any skill – now the people in IT understand the people in marketing, and the other way around,” Audunhus says.

Head of Product, Servebolt

Servebolt's results

Servebolt made ShiftX their shared common language for visualisation of business processes

Inselo delivers customer service, installation, and logistics for some of Scandinavia's biggest companies. They are serving their clients optimal customer journeys.

To do that, they need to understand their client's systems, departments, and needs as fast as possible. And to do 

CTO and Solution Architect at Inselo, Amund Nygaard, is trying to get an "as good as possible" picture of their client's situation when starting up a new customer relationship.

– I'm trying to combine the needs of our operations, our client's operations, and also often IT on both sides. Then handovers between the organizations are the complicated part, which is why we really need tools to understand each other and communicate our needs, Amund says. 

Inselo work with some of Scandinavia's biggest brands in their categories, like Telenor, Telia, NextGenTel, Altibox, RiksTV, PayPal, Jula, Elkjøp, Power, and Clas Ohlson.

– In general, we find one hour spent in ShiftX with our clients equals three "normal" meeting hours, Amund says.

He also sees a quicker close-rate on sales when they and the clients reach a shared common understanding faster. 

– The first workshops with our new clients are important to explore the current status and the areas where we at Inselo can help out. But ShiftX also helps us close sales of the "simple" processes quicker, Amund says. 

He thinks it's because mapping the processes together leaves less uncertainty between them and the clients, which means they often reach an agreement with their clients immediately after the process is mapped out in ShiftX.

– Everyone knows what they need, there's no uncertainty, and they're ready to sign a contract, Amund says. 

When the pandemic hit in 2020, Amund really needed a tool that could let him continue facilitating the workshops he'd been having physically with his new clients.

– ShiftX was a real lifesaver for me when corona hit because I really needed a tool that could help me and our clients map out and understand our shared processes, Amund says. 

With everyone working remotely, he could keep facilitating the workshops.

 digitally than physically, as we could easily make changes live in the workshops. That meant I got no post-workshop work to do, I could just share the process right after the meeting. When the workshop was done, I could go straight to the next meeting, Nygaard says. 

When the current situation is mapped and structured in ShiftX, Inselo and their clients iterate and continuously improve their collaboration by looking for ways of optimizing the processes they've got going.

– We call it learning loops, Amund says.  

It's about not only fixing the immediate challenges, but also taking the time to look into the root cause of non-optimal touchpoints in the customer journeys. 

– Too often we fix the immediate problem, and not the root cause. By fixing the immediate problem, but also creating an issue in the ShiftX process 

[read more about creating issues in ShiftX here]

, we don't lose track of things that might need addressing (when we've got the time). Then we hold meetings to look at the overall process and prioritize and often fix multiple root causes at once, Nygaard says. 

Of things Amund appreciates the most with ShiftX, it's being able to communicate and onboard people no matter if they're from IT, sales, operations, or something else.

– Previously I created big Visio drawings by myself. When I added the technical details, I always lost some of the operation people or some of the salespeople. In ShiftX I can just share the process and almost all of them understand the processes immediately, Amund says. 

And by working the way they do, Inselo has got a lot of positive feedback from their clients. 

– We constantly measure our customer satisfaction, and the last time we checked we had a score of 9,2 out of 10, Amund says. 

See our video case with Amund and Inselo below:

CTO and Solution Architect

Results

How ShiftX helps Inselo close sales faster with quicker client understanding

"When we started the company in 2018, we hired product designers to visualize our customer processes. The processes were given to us as pdf files. We had no more than started working on implementing these before we had to make changes and improvements. Updating the PDFs would require access to special tools, a lot of training and licenses.

Some of our processes and routines were also documented in PowerPoint, Excel, and Word. They were time-consuming to create and update, as well as being almost impossible for new employees to get a handle on as fast as we needed", Borsø says.

Since Ohmia had set ambitious goals of rapid growth in a new market, the need for an intuitive and efficient tool for working with processes was obvious. With teams across multiple geographic locations, easy collaboration was important.

ShiftX gave us immediate effect in the way we communicate and work across locations and units. With a clear common understanding of the business we could move much faster.


In less than a year, Ohmia Charging has grown from two to 30 employees. 

ShiftX is now used throughout the company and the value chain. Internal and external processes are linked together to form the ideal customer journey. Existing processes are being improved and new ones are being developed. Hypotheses are quickly tested and roadmaps are visualized in ShiftX. Training and onboarding of new employees have also proven to be areas with great savings in time and with less friction. When new services are launched, the corresponding ShiftX process is shared for faster and more efficient rollouts.

COO, Ohmia Charging

Result after one year

ShiftX has been key when building the culture at Ohmia

With numerous processes queued for digitization, Frode Bovim, Head of Digital and Innovation at Ramboll Norway, needed a better solution to manage all the people, teams, and systems involved. ShiftX has proven to be an easy-to-use tool that quickly enables them to gain a broadly shared understanding of their processes. This, in turn, sets the stage for teams to collaborate on automating, improving, and refining them.

Several ISO standards are increasingly centered around processes. It’s important to have detailed and accurate visual representations of these processes. This has traditionally been a demanding and error-prone task.

“In a time when process improvement and automation is so important, it is essential that everyone understands the processes and are empowered to collaborate when building digital solutions.”

Building a culture that promotes knowledge sharing and collaboration across the business will increase the value we offer, and strengthen our competitiveness. To help achieve this, Ramboll is now launching an internal platform to empower teams when developing new ideas and services. One of the components of this platform is ShiftX.

“We use ShiftX to visualize, communicate and improve our processes, but equally important, we use it as a tool to build and mature relationships between employees and teams. To us, ShiftX is an efficient and modern tool well suited when building a culture where the organization collectively better understands our processes.”

Head of digital & innovation, Ramboll

Rambolls results:

Ramboll uses ShiftX to ensure shared understanding when building digital solutions

Thomas Trier is responsible for Digitalization and IT at Hovedorgansasjonen Virke, the Federation of Norwegian Enterprise. 

– Digitalizing Virke is about finding ways to work more effectively, to reduce manual tasks, and find ways to automate, Trier says. 

They use ShiftX to get a visual picture of the organization's as-is situation and find ways to optimize their workflows, creating a 

– We wanted to find a notation that is easy to understand and efficiently document our processes. There are models with complicated notations, but with ShiftX, you don't need the training to get started – it's a visual tool that doesn't require extensive onboarding and guidance.

Virke has been using ShiftX for process analysis and documentation.

– We have been doing a lot of process analysis, where ShiftX makes it easy for us to communicate, share, and let others take part, be involved, and read what has been drawn and decided. And we use it to test ideas quickly – is this possible to solve? says Trier. 

They have saved time not having to document workshops.

– Using ShiftX, we can facilitate, draw and adjust during the workshop and document and develop "on the fly." ShiftX makes change easy. In Visio, for example, you can't draw in the tool and facilitate the workshop simultaneously. With ShiftX, we can do that. We are now spending less than half the time documenting workshops compared to what we did before. 

They have used the tool mostly to plan and communicate internal processes and customer journeys.

– We have mapped out flows like sick leave and external customer inquiries. That way, we get a better picture of which systems and underlying processes are involved and get the right questions from those that solve the tasks and work with the systems, Thomas says.

To get a better picture of how Virke has been using ShiftX, you can see one of their public flows mapped out for yourself in the ShiftX embed below. 

Want to see it bigger, inside ShiftX? Have a 

look at how Virke has drawn up their customer inquiry flow in ShiftX here

ShiftX gives you the possibility to map out 

in your process. These will not be shared in the public link, to not overshare business-sensitive information. So the issues Virke have mapped out in their shared public flow will not be visible. But to give you the full picture we have 

made up some issues and made an illustration

, to also show you a flow including issues. 

Want to get notified of new product and company updates from us in the future? 

Chief digitalization and IT officer, Virke

Virke's results:

How Virke is saving time using ShiftX

Kjersti Figenschou works as a Key Account Manager at Mastercard and needs to understand how her customers’ fundamental processes and workflows are connected.

– Before going into a recent meeting with one of my clients, I drew up one of their workflows in ShiftX. During the session, instead of me presenting some PowerPoint slides, we could work together in ShiftX. They could comment on our view of their processes and much quicker get the same picture, Figenschou says.

As a result, Kjersti says they used less time to understand each other, giving space for more in-depth collaboration on the actual areas for improvement.

For the last few years, Kjersti says she has been looking for a tool like this.

– It hasn’t always been easy to get a grip on the 

 process of the customer. But using ShiftX, our customers tell us that now we understand. We get deeper into the matter when we all collaborate 

 a tool, instead of one of the sides just presenting some findings to the other, Kjersti says.

Kjersti also found it very easy to start using ShiftX.

– I started my meeting with this client by excusing myself for being a beginner using ShiftX and asking for their patience. But midway through the meeting, they called me a superuser of it already. It’s straightforward to learn and understand. Very intuitive. And I am no tech genius, Figenschou says.

On the whole, she says collaborating in ShiftX has strengthened their relationship with their customers.

– It`s easier to both listen to my customer and understand each other - at the same time, Kjersti says.