To expand its organization with digital expertise and realize its digital ambitions, Ahsell turned to Head Agent to recruit the right candidate. Ahsell, the Nordic region’s largest distributor of technical products for the construction industry and other B2B companies, aimed to find new ways to work with innovation and explore emerging customer behaviors. This led to the establishment of an “Innovation Lab” as a new function, for which a change leader was to be recruited to further develop the concept.
- The purpose of an Innovation Lab is to take a strategic approach that makes it possible to see broad trends. Customer needs are changing at an ever-faster pace, and new ways of working are required to identify these early.
Johanna, who came into contact with Head Agent at the time of the recruitment, explains that what ultimately convinced her to accept the role was that she could clearly understand what Ahsell aimed to achieve with its digital ambitions.
- As a recruitment and sparring partner, you put into words what Ahsell wanted to accomplish, in a way they perhaps could not have done themselves. This made it easy for me to see the role and place it in perspective based on my previous experience.
Johanna, who has extensive international experience working with digitalization in media, linear TV, and later in telecom, is undoubtedly an excellent match for the challenge, as the primary focus is on creating new digital customer experiences.
- Our business customers are also end consumers. That’s why we need to further invest in personalizing the purchasing experience. There is a lot happening in voice, image, and video, and I want to explore how we can develop this in a B2B context. I will also look at industry-wide changes and how we can adapt to them.
To be able to work on innovation separately from the core business, Johanna points out that there are pitfalls to watch out for. It is common that the pursuit of new ideas can divert attention from what is already working. At Ahlsell, they have sought to prevent this by primarily prioritizing ideas that build on the existing business.
- Most of our employees work in sales, which makes us skilled at picking up signals from our customers. These ‘observations’ are then further developed in the Innovation Lab until we have a clearer prototype or concept. After that, we hand it back to the business, which in turn creates additional job opportunities.
According to Johanna, Ahlsell has a strong will to drive change, a mindset shared by all employees.
- For us, the willingness is not a barrier, but we need the capacity to drive our digital transformation and development work. That’s why we will need to bring in new expertise through both training existing staff and recruiting when necessary.
The Innovation Lab currently consists of three people, with plans to expand the team across multiple areas of expertise, including business development, innovation, UX, and systems development.
- If you want to build a career by driving change for your generation and the next, Ahlsell is a central and stable employer for this.
Why the Innovation Lab:
• Opportunity to step outside the existing strategy to explore new areas
• Experiment with new ideas and technologies intensively to test customer needs
• Build on a small scale and then hand over to the business when the time is right
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