Åsa Melvanius will be the new Managing Director of HiQ Skåne, where she will continue to build on HiQ’s successful operations in the Öresund region. “I’m very happy to welcome Åsa to our team in Skåne. She has an impressive track record and plenty of drive. Together with our fantastic consultants, sales reps, leaders and forward-thinking clients, she will help our business grow stronger in the region,” said Lars Stugemo, President and CEO of HiQ.

Åsa Melvanius will take over as MD of HiQ’s subsidiary HiQ Skåne starting 10 January 2021, replacing Magnus Gudéhn, who has had the role of acting MD since August. Åsa is well-known in the fields of IT, technology and digitalisation in Sweden. As the new MD for HiQ Skåne she will lead development of the consulting company’s operations in the Öresund region.

Åsa has a solid background in the IT consulting industry and has been responsible for building and expanding operations in digital services, design and user-oriented IT solutions. Her most recent job was as digitalisation manager and CIO of Lund Municipality and before that she had a long career at consulting company Capgemini. Åsa is also a finalist for the prestigious CIO of the Year 2020 award.

“I’m very proud and happy to be able to continue developing such a strong and successful company as HiQ Skåne. Getting to work with this competent, creative, ambitious team on creating fantastic digital services and solutions for clients in the region will be great,” says Åsa Melvanius.

HiQ has for more than 15 years successfully built a business in Öresund with its main location in Malmö. The company has gone from being focused on the telecom industry in Lund to spanning the entire HiQ service offering in Tech, IT, Integration and Digital Services together with large international companies as clients.

“I am extremely proud of our entire team in Skåne. Together we have built Öresund’s best team of engineers, developers, strategists and creators. With new management and together with our brave clients, we will continue to use technology development to build a simpler, better, more sustainable and more fun world,” says Lars Stugemo.

Lannebo Fonder, Mawer Investment Management and Swedbank Robur Fonder have accepted Trisall AB’s (”Trisall”) public bid on HiQ International AB (”HiQ”) and are thereby no longer owners in HiQ. As a result of that they have together with the Chairman of the Board Gunnel Duveblad all decided to resign from the Nomination Committee of HiQ.

By request of Trisall, HiQ’s Board of Directors has also invited to an Extraordinary General Meeting to be held on 30 October 2020. Trisall has informed HiQ that Trisall will present a proposal of new Board members in HiQ on 20 October 2020, the latest.

HiQ wins framework agreement with the Municipalities of Skurup, Trelleborg and Ystad for innovation and organisational development services. HiQ was chosen as a supplier after a new approach to procurement that involved a week-long live-streamed innovation sprint. “We are very happy and proud about the agreement and at least as happy and proud about the journey that took us there. We have a lot of experience in building platforms for tangible innovation and having the opportunity to also do it in the procurement phase is really great,” says Magnus Gudéhn, interim Managing Director of HiQ Skåne.

All three municipalities wanted to increase their innovation capacity while streamlining and reducing costs for their efforts.

“We have long felt that we set the parameters entirely too early when selecting suppliers and systems, which hampers our ambition to create new digital solutions for our residents. So, we wanted to challenge both ourselves and the suppliers and try something new,” said Ulf Wedberg, Digitalisation Strategist at Ystad Municipality, one of the initiators of the collective procurement.

They chose to invite the suppliers to an innovation sprint instead of a traditional procurement process. They were invited, independent of each other, to hold an innovation sprint over the course of a week that was simultaneously live-streamed to the procurement team. The three sprints were run in parallel on a rotating schedule that helped the team get an overall picture so they could make a qualified assessment.

“We’ve never been involved in such an effective way of both managing a procurement and clearly being able to see that we prioritised correctly going forward,” says Wedberg.

The agreement was signed with three suppliers after the process was completed for three + two years and the procurement was also nominated as Innovative Procurement of the Year.

“Both the process and the result of the innovation sprint usually make for an aha moment, leading to faster, better and more precise solutions. This is one of HiQ’s core competencies and we are very glad that the municipalities have realised how powerful it is and taken the chance to challenge existing ways of doing things,” says Johannes Arnkvist, design manager at HiQ Skåne.

OR Technologies, part of the Fagerhult Group, chooses HiQ as its strategic partner for establishing a new centre of excellence and development in Linköping. The centre will continue to develop Organic Response, the company’s platform for smart lighting. “It’s very exciting to help Fagerhult Group and OR Technologies get established in Linköping and we look forward to helping develop smart solutions for the intelligent offices and buildings of the future,” says Patrik Holm, Managing Director at HiQ in Linköping.

The centre of excellence in Linköping is an important part of Fagerhult Group’s long-term ambition to offer world-class solutions for smart and sustainable lighting. The focus of the centre of excellence and the collaboration with HiQ is to further develop OR Technologies’ Organic Response platform – an integrated system for controlling and monitoring the smart lighting solutions of the future. The system uses distributed intelligence to control lighting in a climate-smart manner based on physical presence.

HiQ will support the company during the establishment phase to ensure a fast and successful start. That means delivering both strategic guidance and expertise in areas like project management, system and software development, IoT and systems integration.

“Fast-paced development is crucial to taking advantage of the opportunities presented by smart lighting control solutions. With HiQ as a partner, we’ll get a head start and quickly gear up our operations in Linköping. With their previous start-up record and experience with IoT, I’m convinced that it will be a success”, says Dean Campbell-Smith at OR Technologies.

“Fagerhult Group is a leader in smart lighting and with us as a partner, I’m sure we’ll consolidate their position. I’m really looking forward to this collaboration, which will also expand our experience in PropTech and smart buildings,” says Patrik Holm, MD of HiQ in Linköping.

Fagerhult Group is one of Europe’s leading lighting businesses with 4,700 employees in 28 countries. The company has 13 strong brands that all provide high-quality, professional lighting solutions for a variety of uses.

OR Technologies is a company in the Fagerhult Group. Since 2011, it has focussed on creating lighting control systems based on user friendliness and ease of installation. The company’s products and Organic Response platform come with lighting solutions from the Group’s various brands.