Mer - Agile digitalisation in a rapidly growing new market

It all started in 2017 when Mer Sweden (then Clever) contracted Odd Hill to build a few smaller applications as part of their automation work.

Sales of charging solutions places high demands on data management and seamless flows between several systems. All manual handling is not only risky but also easily becomes a bottleneck. It takes a lot of systems engineering and architectural thinking to sew everything together in a good, reliable way. This is exactly the kind of expertise we have at Odd Hill, which has led to a strengthened collaboration.

As Mer's business grew and Odd Hill gained more insight and understanding of the company and its services, the collaboration continued to increase. Smaller applications grew into larger business-critical systems. We saw that we had an important role to play as partner, sounding board and consultant. Recently, we have worked actively to develop and maintain the major part of Mer Sweden's digital systems and applications.

Agile digitalisation Mer style

The big challenge in a rapidly growing industry is maintaining focus. Knowing where to create the most value and prioritizing it. Should you be quick on the ball and build a temporary solution or invest more long-term? In almost all other contexts, the obvious choice is thinking long term, but in a new and rapidly evolving industry, where business opportunities and focus can shift quickly, this is not a given.

Mer's focus has always been on agility and being able to quickly develop digital applications for a rapidly growing market. It's about living in the present, seeing the possibilities and being a little opportunistic. This, of course, places high demands on us as a supplier and guarantor of reliability and quality. Thinking in terms of scalability and sustainable profitability is a bit in our DNA. Maybe this is the reason why the collaboration with Mer has worked so well.

An external colleague and IT department

We realized at an early stage that we could be a valuable partner to Mer Sweden. With increased collaboration, we have gained a fundamental understanding of Mer as an organization, their business and challenges. Transparent and straightforward communication based on mutual respect has been a success factor.

We have gone from traditional supplier to becoming something of an external IT department for Mer Sweden, with common commitment and goal. We are familiar with Mer's plans and have been able to provide expertise and input at an early and critically important stage, which has shortened lead times and made the solutions more optimal and accurate.
 

Mer Sweden highlights

• Partner Portal – an integration between Mer Sweden and their resellers
  Partner Portal is a platform that automates order flows from Mer's various partners to Mer's business systems. When an electric car is sold by a partner, an order is placed on Mer at the same time. The customer also needs a solution to charge the car and that order is made automatically.
• App backend for Mer Sweden
  Mer Sweden offers a companion app that makes it easier for customers to use their public charging network. With it you can see the status of the chargers, navigate to them, start and stop charges and handle payments. The app has been developed together with the consulting company Consid, which has been responsible for UX and frontend development, and Odd Hill, which has been responsible for the development of backend.

• Mer Checkout
  A customized checkout flow that can be easily applied where the need arises, such as the public web or smaller applications. Its purpose is for consumers to be able to buy charging boxes and charging trays, without going through any of Mer's partners.

About Mer

Mer is a European charging corporate group, consisting of a number of e-mobility companies in Sweden, Norway, Germany and the United Kingdom. It is owned by Statkraft and was founded in 2020. Mer Sweden AB (formerly Bee) is the Mer Group's Swedish organization and owned by Statkraft, Jämtkraft, Tekniska verken and Öresundskraft. The head office is located in Helsingborg. The goal is to make electric mobility simple and accessible to everyone and the vision is to become the best and most customer-oriented company in electric car charging in Europe.