We do take pride in being flexible, both regarding our product and as an employer. When Fred Sörgård, an Industrial Engineering and Management student at the Luleå University of Technology joined isMobile for a summer job in 2021 we also came to discuss possibilities for a thesis work. To suit individual preferences, university requirements, and the assignment from us, Fred and Filip ended up in Seville investigating how to facilitate the collaboration between distribution service organisations and different contractors when making installations supporting smart homes. Take part of Fred and Filip’s thesis work experience and their findings.
This semester Fred Sörgård and Filip Artursson, Industrial Engineering and Management students at Luleå University of Technology, performed their thesis work in Spain from January to May before they headed back to Luleå for their examination in June 2022.
Fred: I had such a great time at isMobile when I did my summer job analysing the Swedish and Danish utility market, and I knew that we would get access to lots of knowledge from the people at isMobile and get to focus on an extremely interesting industry if we got the possibility do our thesis work for isMobile. However, Filip and I had spent a semester studying in Singapore and we both wanted to get one additional abroad experience before graduation.
Filip: The solution more or less got tailored to suit all needs. We’ve investigated the Swedish energy and utility market focusing on how to facilitate the collaboration between distribution service organisations and different contractors when making installations supporting smart homes such as solar panels and charging posts. During the work we have done digital interviews with actors within the Swedish energy market, had weekly meetings with our supervisor at the university, Johan Frishammar, and with our Project Manager at isMobile, Martin Davidson, at the same time as we got to experience student life in Seville.
How did you organise everything in Spain?
Fred: Jose Luis at isMobile’s Seville office helped us to get an apartment in the middle of the city. In beginning, it was a bit cold, but we quickly learned that it is better to use an extra sweater than to pay for extra heat. And after a few weeks, we could enjoy the great Spanish climate. We don’t speak Spanish, we spoke English and when needed we took some help from the app Duolingo. Due to Covid, Jose Luis and Alberto didn’t work at the office in Seville at the beginning of our stay so we arranged so that we could do most of our work at the University of Seville.
What’s a workday like?
Filip: We started around 08:30. It was mostly Fred and I working together planning and performing interviews and analysing the results. We really got good treatment from all the respondents we contacted for our interviews. They’re great at helping students out and they were interested in our work. During the work we sometimes needed a perspective from the sales organisation and contacted them discuss different angles and solutions. We tried to enjoy a Spanish lunch break every day and then continued our work until around 17:00. Besides from our own thesis work we were opponents to others student work and had our own opponents that gave us feedback and helped us proceed with our work. On weekday evenings we sometimes went to an event, a dinner or Fred went to the local gym while I preferred to go out and run or use one of all the outdoor gyms. On Fridays we kind of created our “Friday routine”. We took a little shorter workday and went to play tennis and then met up with other students at a restaurant area close to the university. People are really eager to enjoy the weekend so there was a lot of fun going on.
What was the scope of work and what conclusions did you make?
Fred: isMobile has extensive experience in digitizing collaboration between asset owners (customers) and contractors of technical installation and maintenance services in the field. Based on this experience, isMobile wanted to investigate the need for a marketplace that connects customers and contractors.
In order to get a suitable scope, we all agreed to limit the target group for the survey to new modern energy services for homes and buildings, e.g., solar panels, electrical charging posts, heat exchangers, and smart sensor-controlled homes in Sweden.
The typical main actors in this target group are the local energy companies (DSO’s), the turn-key solution providers of energy services, and the installation companies. Together, these actors form a chain of delivery to the end customer that can be an individual or a company. We conducted a number of interviews with these main players regarding their need for a marketplace to locate and carry out the purchase and sale of these services and to support orders and deliveries between them.
Filip: Key takeaways from the thesis were that quality assurance and communication with the end customer are very important for the willingness to use a marketplace. The market for these new energy services is growing very rapidly and the relations between turn-key solution providers and their contracted installation companies are considered important. The quality of the service is considered more important than the price right now. As a result, in order for a customer to consider making an agreement with a new installation company, the marketplace needs to ensure the quality of the supplier.
The market for installation companies within this industry is very good and these companies often have more jobs than they have time for. A very important value that both the turn-key suppliers and the installation companies see great potential in is that a transaction platform can simplify communication with the end customer by providing a single point of contact.
Fred: It feels like we have gotten an opportunity to end our five years of studies in the best possible way here in Seville. We’ve learnt a lot at the same time as we got to have an awesome time in Spain.
isMobile has really supported us throughout our thesis work and they have provided us with facts, ideas, industry knowledge and guidance that we needed along the road. We hope and believe that we have been able to provide the company with a number of valuable insights that will help them in their continued business development.