Visma Connect, the reporting technology market leader, and HiQ’s integration platform Frends will deliver Frends to Visma Connect’s rapidly growing integration services client base to the Dutch market. "It’s great to see Frends expand to even more countries. The demand for integration platforms is increasing and it shows at the speed in which Frends is growing," says Sven Ivar Mørch, CEO of HiQ.

The demand for integration services is growing rapidly. Most applications today are delivered as Software as a Service (SaaS). SaaS software companies and their clients are looking for user-friendly and powerful integrations to maximize efficiency, provide new services and harness data value. At the same time, there are many companies that still use on-premises systems that could benefit from connectivity. A platform like Frends can be seamlessly used for both situations. Visma Connect, the reporting technology market leader, and HiQ’s integration platform Frends will deliver the platform to Visma Connect’s rapidly growing integration services client base.

“Low-Code integrations seem to amaze even the experienced integrators with flexibility and extendibility. Final touch is the pricing of Frends, which is, first of all, public and reasonable. Visma Connect has demonstrated the Frends expertise to several customers already,” says Juha Moisio, VP, Global sales at HiQ’s Frends.

The Frends integration platform empowers organizations to develop, manage and secure all API integrations and process automation within one powerful platform. Frends provides a lean, low-code and visual interface to build, deploy, manage and monitor all API integrations. Visma Connect’s integration specialists offer full-service support and can set up integration processes in Frends. Depending on the customer’s needs, they can also maintain and develop additional integrations. Visma Connect offers integration services to a wide range of companies and governments. These services range from consultancy, a dedicated team that helps you manage large roll outs, and full lifecycle management for APIs and integrations.

“Data sharing is one of the pillars of the digital society. Frends offers an intuitive, low-code and very powerful enterprise application integration platform that allows for secure and efficient API integrations. Exactly what you need for effective data transfer,” says Kim Andersen, MD at Visma Connect.

As a result of the demand for the Frends platform, it is now entering the Dutch market with Visma Connect. Visma will resell Frends as an offering to their clients, to help them launch integrations faster to market. Together with the client base of Visma they will help a lot of companies with their integration, on Frends’ quest to take over yet another country in Europe.

About Visma Connect:

In the digital age, data is the most important asset. Today, we share more and more data with each other, for all kinds of purposes. But how can we do this in a safe, fast and verifiable way? 

Visma Connect is the leader in enabling secure, qualified and trusted data exchange. Just as energy companies built the infrastructure that made the industrial revolution possible, Visma Connect is the utility provider of the digital society. 

https://vismaconnect.nl/en/

HiQ with its design team from Great Apes wins gold in the European Design Awards with Lux Nemus, an interactive projection experience and a part of Metsä Group’s visitor center, Pro Nemus. "Incredible that Great Apes wins this award! Fantastic work from the team and great that we get noticed on a European arena," says Sven Ivar Mørch, CEO of HiQ.

HiQ with its design team from Great Apes wins gold in the European Design Awards with Lux Nemus. The project, which consists of a collection of custom-built walls featuring Metsä’s wood, fibre and other innovative products, is an interactive projection experience that is part of the visitor center Pro Nemus by Metsä Group. The product collages have got projections that allow visitors to interact with the walls via a touch screen. Visitors can highlight individual products, explore and learn more about them through unique light projections. The core of the installation is to showcase how Metsä Group uses each part of a tree as efficiently as possible for the purpose that creates the most value.

“We are happy to receive one more gold in the European Design Awards together with Metsä Group. It feels extra special as there is so much competition in the awards,” says Niko Sipilä, Creative Director at Great Apes. 

The European Design Awards, or ED Awards, have been recognizing talented designers since 2007. It differs from other design competitions as the jury is composed of journalists and critics – and not the creators themselves. The jury consists of a variety of design magazines from across Europe.

HiQ’s Great Apes is one of the most internationally acclaimed digital agencies in Finland, with previous golds in the European Design Awards, including one for the concept and prototype for the digital driving license for Finnish Transport Safety Agency, Trafi, and the previous project Nemus Futurm with Metsä Group. Great Apes also has a track record of recognition in leading competitions like the Webby Awards, Red Dot Design Awards and Eurobest, as well as Nordic awards like the Grand One and Grafia’s “Best of the year”.

Read more:

https://europeandesign.org/submissions/lux-nemus/

St1 chooses HiQ’s Frends as the next steppingstone in their long-term partnership with HiQ. Frends will be the company’s new solution for API management and mobile back-end integrations. "To move even further into our partnership with St1 is a great thing. It proves that we can offer our clients a variation of services, tapping into more areas than just one. This enables us to become an even deeper partner and I’m very happy to see us growing in our partnership with St1," says Sven Ivar Mørch, CEO of HiQ.

HiQ has played an important part in St1’s work with digitalization projects by designing and developing business critical features to the mobile applications creating completely new businesses to the St1 and Shell brands. These projects have included the development of features such as mobile fueling & car washes, digital subscription-based coffee agreement and the St1 Mastercard account. Now the company selects HiQ for another, new area by selecting Frends as their new solution for API management and mobile back-end integrations. 

“It’s a true honor for HiQ and Frends to work with St1 and for an even deeper partnership. Our aim is to simplify and improve, to be able to do this for an already existing client at HiQ is the core of what we want to do, tap into more segments for each client,” says Jukka Rautio, Head of Frends at HiQ.

As St1 has developed a growing number of digital solutions, the company found themselves in a situation where the existing API architecture was not meeting the business requirements. St1 was looking for a solution that could help them reduce the IT burden and the total cost of ownership (TCO) as well as reduce delivery cycles of API’s and integrations and choose Frends for this as the old solution had grown complex and was costly to maintain.

With Frends, St1 moved the API-first architecture approach and created a secure ecosystem for all applications. Some of the implementations included: 

1. API management. Enables a full life-cycle management of API’s: designing, publishing, monitoring and managing. 
2. API gateway. Adds the additional layer of security to the microservices and back-end functions as a load balancer to handle requests in the most efficient manner.
    

“With Frends we can take care of all our API management requirements. We selected Frends as our long-term API management solution and so far, it has proven flexible, reliable and cost-efficient,” says Linda Pihl, Head of Digital at St1 Nordic.

With the new simplified API solution St1 was able to reduce the volume of unwanted traffic and increase reliability. The platform had over 1 000 000 process executions within the first month in use and currently handles over 3 million API calls per month. The partnership between St1 and HiQ also covers the support and maintenance operations for all the mobile apps and Frends integration solution.

For more technical information, please visit:
https://frends.com/customers/st1 

About St1:
www.st1.se 

Eskilstuna municipality chooses HiQ to develop the new eskilstuna.se with the purpose of transforming it into a website based on users’ needs. The website should make it easy for users to find the information they need to get answers to their questions or to carry out errands online. HiQ developed a new design for the website, a completely new search function and in parallel, built in AI to increase the precision. "This is a nice project for us at HiQ and a very good collaboration with Eskilstuna municipality with the work on the new eskilstuna.se. Being able to help simplify things for them and their citizens, to create a more accessible Eskilstuna, has been very rewarding especially since they are so happy with their new website," says Sven Ivar Mørch, CEO of HiQ.

As society develops tougher requirements are put on a municipality and its accessibility. Citizens today expect to be able to carry out errands at any time of the day and to get answers to questions without having to sit in a telephone queue. The demands on a municipality and its website are therefore substantial in terms of the digital services offered, if it becomes too cumbersome, users will still pick up the phone and call the municipality for help.

Eskilstuna municipality chooses HiQ with the aim of transforming eskilstuna.se into a website based on users’ need for municipal services and through this make it easier for users to find the information they need to get answers to their questions or carry out errands online. It is mainly about developing frequently asked questions to reduce the number of calls, increase the use of the digital service as well as the trust in the municipality and to be able to provide visitors with even better service. The vision is also to reduce the administrative work for both administrators and editors as the content does not require as much manual work as before. The purpose is also to strengthen Eskilstuna municipality’s brand platform “Good Sustainable Meetings” and thereby increase residents’ trust. The website must also comply with the rules and laws that exist regarding the accessibility and adapt the graphic profile to the new digital platform.

“I have had the privilege of working alongside the world’s best colleagues to develop, in my opinion, Sweden’s best municipal website. Many thanks to the best team and to HiQ,” says Martina Manneh, Municipal Strategy Communication & Digitization at Eskilstuna municipality.

“I am so incredibly proud to have been involved in developing the municipality’s new website together with our fantastic consultants at HiQ,” says Mikael Mörnhed, Developer/Webb Editor at Eskilstuna municipality.

HiQ developed a completely new design for the website, which is built in SiteVision, with a strong user focus. Through interviews and tests, it became clear that an entirely new navigation needed to be developed as well as creating a more elaborate search function. The new search function highlights E-services and recommended landing pages created with the website’s label system. The number of pages on the website also needed to be reduced to a more manageable amount. In parallel, AI was built in to increase the website’s precision. The new navigation offers a faster path, to simpler and better information. The website has also been reviewed on the basis of the new law on accessibility to digital public services. 

“Together with my wonderful colleagues and the professional gang at HiQ, I have been involved in launching Eskilstuna municipality’s new website. We are so satisfied and happy with our new SiteVision web, spiced with exciting AI solutions from rec.ai,” says Henrik Bondeson, Web Editor at Eskilstuna municipality.

More about Eskilstuna municipality:
www.eskilstuna.se