Alfa Laval Explore, the story
Interview with our client Alfa Laval — Tom Manelius, product owner of Explore.
This is a story of how we worked closely together with our client
Alfa Laval and Tom Manelius to create a groundbreaking product called Explore— an amazing tool that helps their customers to determine if centrifugal separators are the right way to go — and got featured in a scientific engineering magazine.
How did it all start?
It all started when Tom, who is the product owner of Explore at Alfa Laval, together with his team realised that they need to digitize: “We knew what we wanted to build, but we were not really sure how and what needed to be done to be able to execute it. Therefore, we were not able to move forward for quite a while.”
What happened next?
“We had a workshop with tretton37. The workshop’s methodology gave our project the right structure and kept our focus on Explore’s client. This helped us to set the path going forward, and it also gave clarity to the whole project. It was exactly the guidance we needed.”
What did the whole process of working together look like?
“It was intense work under a tight time restriction. We only had 10 weeks to get things done, but it was possible because of the tight collaboration and the tretton37 team set up.”
Tom eagerly describes the public launch of Explore at the well visited Achema Exhibition: “I was surprised how well it worked and how few bugs it had when going live for the first time! I was gathering tuning input based on demos for potential clients and had the tretton37 team on the line at all times implementing these improvements as my feedback was rolling in. It was an example of teamwork working at its very best. I felt very supported throughout the entire process, and the whole launch activity felt very exciting.”
If you could pinpoint a few things that were good, what would they be?
“tretton37’s focus was on assuring that things were implemented with quality and always with a tight deadline in mind. I appreciated that tretton37 adjusted the team size during the process, both up and down, to have the highest rate of efficiency. This actually made us come in nicely below budget which of course was great. I was also thankful that tretton37 were used to support a large organization like ours, knowing how to help us make fast decisions in a very good way — the team kept driving things forward in a flexible, understanding manner.”
What happened after the product launch?
“After the launch, the Explore tool was rolled out internationally within Alfa Laval and it has been extremely well received among our sales teams across the world. We also created a digital promotion campaign towards customers, and have seen the traffic to our tool increase substantially.”
Why is Explore so great? What does it mean for Alfa Laval?
“It is something unique, allowing customers to find solutions to separation problems with themselves in the driving seat for the first time. This is something that our competitors don’t have. It is definitely our competitive advantage where we can offer a robust methodology through a web tool, and support it with our sales force and hardware. It saves us time and supports our sales process very well in multiple ways.”
We at tretton37 love to create products where innovation, speed and quality matter. And we also love to work with individuals like Tom, who are as passionate about their work as we are about ours. In this story, passion from Alfa Laval and passion tretton37 met and created something unique.
