Name Markus GranlundCompany Semcon

Position CEOHQ Gothenburg, Sweden

Employees 3,000

EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

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Change makersAfter implementing new business models, international technology company

Semcon is on track to deliver more value to its client base.

IMAGES STIG ALBANSSON

The global financial crisis hit a year after Markus Granlund joined Semcon. Then the automotive crisis came; and Semcon have a lot of automotive clients. But eight years on — four of them with Markus as CEO — the company goes from strength to strength. This is in part largely due to Markus and his team seeing a different

way of doing business with its clients.

Markus explains: “I would say compared to where Semcon was a few years ago, we are now on a much more strategic level with our customers. We are talking about what the products and our solutions can provide to the end user, rather than just being a supplier that only responds to customer demands.”

Markus, a Swedish lawyer with a Masters of Law from Lund University in his home country, and a Masters of International Trade Law gained in Australia, was headhunted by Semcon in 2008. It had recently acquired IVM with operations in Germany, Brazil, and Spain. When it then acquired Caran, one of its largest competitors in the Swedish market, Markus was hired by Semcon to handle the risk perspective of the group and head up the legal department.

It was after a couple of years doing that work, that Markus and the management team started to realise the potential for new business models. He explains: “When I went through the quotations that we sent out to customers, we were working in a way where we provided a lot of value to our customers, but we weren’t realising the value of that in the prices that

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EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

“We are proud of our long-term partnership with Semcom, where we provide their world-class organisation with a purpose-built ERP platform that supports sustainable, profitable growth, and helps their talented people provide expert services to clients all over the world.” - Stefan Grahn, VP Sales and Managing Director Nordic, Deltek

the customers paid; so I got more and more interested in how we were pricing our services and what kind of business models we used.”

It was in 2011 that Markus was given the position of Vice President of the Group, responsible for business development while also heading the legal department at the same time. Then a year later, the board asked him to take on the role of CEO.

He inherited a company that had recovered from the GFC after a turbulent time, shedding almost a third of its workforce. By 2012 they were achieving stable margins, but growth was still required. Changes in the German market starting in 2012 further cemented Markus’ approach and a new business model was implemented that was focused on project-based delivery, providing more value to the client. This required a change in the skill base, too.

“That has implications in making sure that our employees and the leaders in our group have the relevant know-how and expertise to carry out and deliver projects, because that’s going to be an even bigger part of our offer moving forward,” Markus says. “Since 2012 we have been working very hard on the structures within the group to make sure that we have a solid, what we call ‘Semcon Project Model’, which has been implemented throughout the group, with all of the relevant training and certification.”

Alongside upskilling the workforce, Semcon implemented a CRM system to better handle the sales organisation of the group. Importantly, this also transformed the business organisation to work across more than a single industry focus. “Before we had one business area focusing purely on automotive, and another business area that was focusing on the traditional

manufacturing industry, energy, and life science. Instead, we can now use the expertise from various industries and markets to create better products, with higher value for the end user and increased business for our customers”.

Markus adds: “This has turned out quite well and by doing this we have a much more f lexible organisation today than we had four years ago.”

With a presence in nine markets, including Brazil, China and India, global expansion is part of future plans.

As it looks forward, its operations will still be based on three key areas of focus: “To continue to increase the value that we can provide to our customers; to make sure that we can be even more successful in the delivery capabilities that we have with the global teams; and, to increase the creativity that we have in the group to provide good product development for our customers.”

As Markus proudly states: “I think we take product development one step further than many of our competitors.”

“We can now use the expertise from various industries to be a better supplier to our customers.” – Markus Granlund

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