HiQ wins framework agreement for innovation and organisational development services with three municipalities in Skåne

HiQ wins framework agreement with the Municipalities of Skurup, Trelleborg and Ystad for innovation and organisational development services. HiQ was chosen as a supplier after a new approach to procurement that involved a week-long live-streamed innovation sprint.

“We are very happy and proud about the agreement and at least as happy and proud about the journey that took us there. We have a lot of experience in building platforms for tangible innovation and having the opportunity to also do it in the procurement phase is really great,” says Magnus Gudéhn, interim Managing Director of HiQ Skåne.

All three municipalities wanted to increase their innovation capacity while streamlining and reducing costs for their efforts.

“We have long felt that we set the parameters entirely too early when selecting suppliers and systems, which hampers our ambition to create new digital solutions for our residents. So, we wanted to challenge both ourselves and the suppliers and try something new,” said Ulf Wedberg, Digitalisation Strategist at Ystad Municipality, one of the initiators of the collective procurement.

They chose to invite the suppliers to an innovation sprint instead of a traditional procurement process. They were invited, independent of each other, to hold an innovation sprint over the course of a week that was simultaneously live-streamed to the procurement team. The three sprints were run in parallel on a rotating schedule that helped the team get an overall picture so they could make a qualified assessment.

“We’ve never been involved in such an effective way of both managing a procurement and clearly being able to see that we prioritised correctly going forward,” says Wedberg.

The agreement was signed with three suppliers after the process was completed for three + two years and the procurement was also nominated as Innovative Procurement of the Year.

“Both the process and the result of the innovation sprint usually make for an aha moment, leading to faster, better and more precise solutions. This is one of HiQ’s core competencies and we are very glad that the municipalities have realised how powerful it is and taken the chance to challenge existing ways of doing things,” says Johannes Arnkvist, design manager at HiQ Skåne.