Several Swedish municipalities have chosen to move their integrations to the fast-growing Frends iPaaS. Frends was recognized as a Niche Playerin the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Integration Platform as a Service, Worldwide earlier this year.Frends help municipalities such as Helsingborg, Sundbyberg and Östersund to streamline and modernize their digitization journeys.
Finnish Frends has grown rapidly in recent years, and recently was recognized in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Integration Platform as a Service, Worldwide asa Niche Player. At present, Frends has established contracts with 30 municipalities and has also partnered with several stakeholders involved in municipal functions. In recent years, many have chosen to transition to the Frends platform, a timing which according to Frends depends on a variety of factors. Håkan Svedberg, Territory Sales Manager at Frends, says:
“Municipal residents have increasingly high expectations for seamless and digital services, and the municipalities obviously need to keep pace with these expectations. In the past, many municipalities relied on older integration technology that functioned adequately but was not adapted for the future. Many have also wanted to be able to experiment and increase the degree of innovation, which we think is an exciting development," Håkan explains.
Helsingborg, Sundbyberg, Kalmar, Karlskrona, Kungsbacka, Östersund, and several other municipalities have made the decision to migrate their integrations to Frends iPaaS. The ways in which municipalities utilize Frends iPaaS vary and encompass a range of functions, including internal personnel management, salary payments, processing building permit applications, and automation within the education sector. There are also the municipalities that use Frends to develop more innovative solutions, of which Helsingborg is a notable example.
"Helsingborg has made significant advances in digitization and has selected Frends as the integration platform for its central data platform. An interesting project developed with the assistance of Frends is the AI assistant called Laiban, which is currently accessible on iPads within the municipality's preschools. Laiban enables children to find answers to various questions, such as who will pick them up on a given day or what the lunch options are. Additionally, Laiban supports multiple languages," explains Håkan Svedberg.
Frends stands out as one of the few Scandinavian iPaaS alternatives on the market, which makes the platform particularly well-suited for municipalities and other enterprises with rigours security requirements.
Tomas Beijar, Technical Sales Manager at Frends, explains, “Many of our competitors are based in the United States, which can present a legal maze for municipalities with highly specific security requirements. With Frends, we can ensure data security as all data remains within Sweden’s borders. Furthermore, our local presence allows us to provide prompt assistance whenever required.”
Many municipalities also highlight the advantages of ease of use and reduced administration costs when using Frends. Furthermore, Frends collaborates with a library specifically designed for municipalities, offering a collection of pre-built integrations. This enables municipalities to share ready-made solutions among themselves, resulting in time and cost savings for all parties involved.
In addition to the municipalities with which Frends have contracts with, several discussions are underway with other stakeholders, with the goal to continuing assisting municipalities in streamlining and modernizing their digital transformation journeys.
To further strengthen its commitment, Frends welcomed Robert Jakobsson earlier this year. He joined from Tietoevry, where he specialized in TEIS (Tietoevry Integration Server). With more than 15 years of experience as a Sales Manager in the public sector, Robert brings valuable expertise to the team.
"Integration should be regarded as a proactive and strategic priority, planned and coordinated alongside the acquisition of new systems. It involves ensuring the quality of migrations from older, traditional platforms and facilitating the adoption of a modern, high-quality platform. At Frends, we possess a deep understanding of the municipalities' circumstances, enabling us to streamline their digitization journeys and implement new systems without the need for extensive consulting services. Additionally, municipalities have a pressing need to prioritize eliminating integration debt, which enhances the efficiency of employees' daily work," says Robert.
*Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Integration Platform as a Service, Worldwide, Keith Guttridge, Andrew Comes, Saikat Ray, 24 January 2023.
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