"The strategic thinking behind development of our products."

“For some time we have had a special strategy regarding our products, both in terms of creating new ones and refining those we already have,” says Anders Marklund, managing director of DataPolarna.

A basic idea that DataPolarna has always strived to achieve is to develop products that can be sold to multiple customers without special adaptation.

Some similarities with the Office suite

“Our thinking is something like the idea behind the Microsoft Office suite of applications. There is a standard solution that is suitable for most users, even though every customer may not always use all of the features that the product contains. We will use SawInfo as the overall ‘family name’ for our products for sawmills and wood processing. We then develop special subsidiary products such as SIDO, SIPlan, SIBB and SIProd. All of these can be used independently and have their special features that will help customers become more efficient and profitable. The content of the products is packaged to suit as many customers as possible.”

If a special customer then wants to make changes in the product based on its specific needs, we can certainly do so, but then of course the cost rises and maintaining the product becomes more difficult. Therefore, we try, if possible, to incorporate all the good ideas in the product and in this way make the features available to all users.

“Another principle is that our products should make it possible for us to acquire at least 10 customers,” Marklund continues. “This gives us the critical mass we need to maintain the product in the long term, both with ideas and financially.”

We want to foster development

Because we have worked with sawmills and wood processing as our main target group for 20 years, we have accumulated comprehensive knowledge of their industry and circumstances. This allows us to foster the development of our products based on our experience and then capitalise on our expertise in the development of software. As a result, we can now offer a product line for sawmills and wood processing that is nearly wall-to-wall.

“We say ‘nearly wall-to-wall’ because we are, of course, working continuously to develop new products and further refine those we already have in our product line,” Marklund says. “We constantly strive to be the best in our field, and we will never abandon that goal.”

Another basic idea in our way of working is that we want to make it easy for our customers to purchase and install our products. Those who want to buy our products should never feel they are getting involved in a complex IT project. They should rather see it as a fairly simple installation with associated training.

Help us find a new name for SawInfo!

“Finally, I have a little challenge for all of our customers and everyone who is interested in our products. Since we want to see SawInfo as the umbrella for our products for sawmills and wood processing in the future, we would like to create a new name for what has been called SawInfo up to now – that is, our system for graphical inventory management, shipping of timber packages and other functions.If you have a suggestion for a good name, feel free to contact us.We will reward whoever submits the best proposal in one way or another,” Anders Marklund concludes with a secretive smile.