Cederroth

Leif joined Cederroth International in January 1995, as a temporary IT manager, responsible for the IT-consequences of its acquisition of Mölnlycke Toiletteries. That company was of the same size as Cederroth, with a completely different view and maturity of IT.

The take-over plans required an initial solution within an eight-week horizon, working across four countries from day one, with scope including a multipurpose factory and a pan-Scandinavian warehouse in Sweden. Having successfully engineered an intermediate solution in the timeframe set, management became convinced that a reengineered set of business processes was required, together with a new IT-strategy. As a result, Leif’s brief extended to the design of a new IT-strategy and a reengineering plan, which were approved by the board in June 1995. At that time, Leif was asked to orchestrate the execution of the plan, as an employee of Cederroth – a challenge he could not and did not resist.

One of the fundaments of the plan was a stepwise implementation of a common, cross-country ERP-system supporting all the business processes of the new company.

	The work for putting the functional requirement specification together started in August-95.
	In November, eight potential suppliers were evaluated, with a shortlist made comprising three suppliers.
	After a more detailed evaluation, suppliers were ranked and, in January –‘96, the Board decided to choose Movex from Intentia.
	Implementation started in March ’96 and in January ‘97 Cederroth went live with its first phase - all the Swedish entities (2 factories, 3 warehouses, 2 customer services), based on a "Big Bang" approach.
	Step-by-step the system was rolled out in Finland, Norway, Denmark and Spain (October ‘99). There were, of course, hurdles to overcome, but a strong commitment from Group Executives allowed the team to lose little momentum.

The second fundament of the strategy was to form a common technical platform and infrastructure for all the companies of the Group, and the third was to establish an IT-organisation and business processes to manage, maintain and develop what had been achieved. This was gradually done from ‘96 through ‘97.

By Spring 2000, with the Y2K-project concluded, Leif felt he had reached the end of a most stimulating, interesting and demanding project