Skandikon – interim support in times of change
Flexible interim support in times of change
Skandikon is an independent subsidiary to insurance company Skandia and offers outsourcing of management of administrative flows for occupational pensions. By combining modern systems with efficient processes, expert competence, and a high level of service, Skandikon is the obvious choice of partner for insurers. In 2021 Skandikon had a turnover of 145,4 MSEK, administrating just over 30 occupational pension plans and managing just over 1,5 million individuals and over 2000 client company employers in their systems. Currently Skandikon employs some 80 people whereof 14 on a consultancy basis.
Challenge
Alumni has had a longstanding relationship with Skandikon supporting in the recruitment of a number of strategically important roles since 2017. Last year we were fortunate enough to work on the role of Operations Manager and found a perfect match in Maarit Lundmark who stepped into the role autumn 2019.
Maarit quickly identified some areas of improvement especially in one of the three administrative departments she was responsible for. She approached Alumni to help with an interim solution understanding that she needed to:
buy herself some time to figure out the best way forward for her organisation
solve a current emergent need for on-hand support and
build an efficient organisation for the long-term with improved ways of working
Maarit Lundmark
Operations Manager at Skandikon since 2019 and currently responsible for ensuring an organisation with efficient delivery and execution of the service-level agreements regulated in Skandikon’s customer contracts. The operations team consists of actuaries, pension administrators, business developers including RPA-developers.
Maarit has previous experience of similar departments with outsourcing focus.
Vivianne Almstedt
Experienced interim professional, with a background in finance, accounting, payroll, customer interaction and IT. Working as interim consultant since 2017, having contributed in various organisations with for example procurement management, accounting, setting up back-office service centres, implementation of large scale system solutions and change management projects.
“In my experience it’s always beneficial in large and complex change management projects to involve an external consultant in the implementation phase, such as an interim professional. For an existing manager to take the lead in projects where conflicts and resistance amongst the employees easily surface, and then return to the normal role, will often be difficult. With an interim professional in place, the existing manager can focus entirely on being the much-needed stable leader offering support and ensuring continued success of the project through the management phase.”
Results
Alumni quickly engaged our network of interim consultants finding that the candidate search went quite a bit outside of our existing relations. Through mapping the market and working with leads from our existing network we were able to identify and sign Vivianne Almstedt, a senior interim professional with outstanding track-record of optimizing large workflows and improving efficiency in processes across a range of industries. She took on the role as interim Head of the department for Insurance Administration.
With an interim solution in place to handle the emergent situation and day-to-day operations in the department, Maarit also found that Vivianne could help add further value in being a sparring partner, providing an important external perspective in helping to set the future organisation. Using an interim solution some key advantages for Skandikon were:
Time to manage stakeholders and design a new organisation
Support in managing day-to-day running of the operations
An external point of view and experienced know-how of best practice
Added benefit of advice from independent external party with no internal ties or legacy, with only motive being to improve the business for the long-term and a successful project delivery.
A further outcome of our collaboration was a permanent recruitment and executive search for a new department head of the Insurance Administration.
“For us, taking onboard and interim consultant has been very valuable. Vivianne helped us gain momentum and get some very quick results. She provided great experience in leadership issues and helped us with a stable set-up. Vivianne also helped ensure that individuals in our organisation were given the right support to develop and grow into their respective role in a much-improved way. This has left our organisation much stronger. Part of her work was also to implement a number of processes and put in place some of the pre-requisites, that has really helped pave the way and set our permanent solution up for success.”
Contact
For more information and a confidential discussion about how Alumni can help your organisation please get in touch.