Being the Beacon

On 1 December, Lars Flodén passed the leadership baton for Observit on to Bj?rn Callenfors . This was the culmination of a collaborative year-long process – raising a new shining light to lead us into our next stage as we grow from being a regional success story, to a global one. These two good people have been working very closely together throughout the handover period and you can tell how proud Lars is to be passing the reins into Bj?rn’s capable hands.

“We started more than a year ago to find the new person who could take Observit forward into the next ten years. We’re really pleased that, out of all the highly skilled professionals we spoke to, Bj?rn is with us today.” Lars adds happily, “I am convinced that he is the right person for the job.”

This seemed like a good time to find out from both Lars and Bj?rn what, exactly, a Chief Executive Officer does.

What doesn’t a CEO do?

For Lars, as the CEO of a start-up company, “A CEO is basically the person who makes the decisions, of course. But in a small growing company, you might do everything: admin, HR, finance, sales, business strategy, development, marketing, customer service.”

Bj?rn’s role, now, is not to run the same race that Lars did, but to forge a new path forward – to build on the 26 years of progress that has been made so far. He seeks to “…be the Beacon that the company can follow. You create the culture and inspire people. You have to embody the vision of the company and live that in every email, every meeting, and every engagement both internally and externally.” ?

Pride and enthusiasm

Lars’ pride is as clear as Bj?rn’s excitement and enthusiasm. But what first pulled Bj?rn into this role? Before this, Bj?rn was a partnership manager at Axis Communications , working closely with Observit, and he explains, “Every time I tried to sell Lars something that I thought was smart with the hardware that I was representing, Lars came back and said, ‘Oohh yeah, we've already done that’. And it happened on several occasions: they had not just thought about doing it and done it in a small scale, but they had done it for years, in thousands of cameras. So, then the opportunity presented itself, and now I'm looking forward to saying the same thing to their new representatives.”

Both Bj?rn and Lars see this, clearly, not as a sea-change in what they do, but as a natural next step in an exciting and very fruitful journey – a continuation on this path that started from bringing digital technology into an analogue industry.

Where did Observit start?

In 1994, the internet was young and much smaller than it is today. Can you imagine now, a team of four people reading all the new pages posted to the web, every day?

Observit started with an ambition to use the internet to provide vital services, which crystallized into a company in 1996. There weren’t network-connected cameras then, so we built our own. Then Axis manufactured their first network cameras, and we started building services that would make the cameras talk sense. Since about 2010, we’ve focused purely on video technology. Now we are reporting on almost 40,000 lenses.

The internet wasn’t the only thing that was young in 1996. Bjorn: “was 11 years old, waiting for YouTube to be invented so I can watch my eSports!”

What is Observit?

First and foremost, we are a software company.

We are an IT company, specialising in the development of a software service, which is constantly updated over time – constantly updated with functions for the user.

Over the years, cameras have become smarter, the Cloud has become smarter, so we are able to use this to remove a lot of the things that used to be necessary to make a video system work. If you look at the landscape of most companies selling into this space, they still adhere to the old logic ‘a camera needs a recorder’. ?

But what does a recorder look like? A recorder does not have to be a little box placed somewhere under the driver’s seat. It could be the camera itself, or it could be part of the cloud.

We have a development team who like to challenge the status quo. They are always asking questions – why should we do it like that? Is there a smarter way we can do things? This ethos has embodied the way that Observit has developed over time.

Where are we heading?

We are removing boundaries.

Recorders have been a cornerstone of video technology, whether digital or analogue. We are rewriting that map altogether. Using the internet, the cloud, and taking advantage of the edge capabilities of the very smart cameras we are using, we are decreasing costs for our customers while actually ADDING functionality.

Now that we have a proven track record within our smaller geographical reach – our global journey has just started. We are part of the future. Public transport is something that has to grow massively if we are to meet our climate goals. Observit can play a pivotal role in being able to secure transportation of both people and goods.

Artificial Intelligence offers the next big step forward for video service providers. And our development team are right in the heart of it.

We are more than a video surveillance solution

AI will allow us to just capture the footage of interest, not being invasive in people’s privacy. “It’s not about ‘big brother sees you’, it’s about being secure and feeling secure when travelling on public transport.”

Electrification of fleets of vehicles will create a lot of interesting opportunities for us going forward and a lot of interesting problems that people did not foresee. We can play a really big part in that.

Thank you, Lars – you’ve been an amazing CEO!

Lars will remain on the board, but from 1 December, he has handed the reins of strategic leadership over to Bj?rn, who will be the new CEO.?

Welcome Bj?rn – Observit’s new inspirational beacon