Customer Story
How Soolo laid the foundation for future growth
About
Soolo AS Soolo AS delivers IoT solutions that enable customers to streamline and quality-assure their logistics processes—such as filling, emptying, or maintenance. With domestically produced hardware and software, Soolo has found a strong niche and focus within the fuel industry.
Challenge
Soolo had no project management system beyond Microsoft 365 and therefore needed more structure, internal control, and better visibility into customer follow-up and the sales pipeline.
Solution
Soolo implemented the Business Online management system, which provides the company with a unified platform for document and information storage, customer dialogue, and systematic collaboration.
Implementation
Soolo received a flexible training and onboarding process, making it manageable to learn the new system alongside ongoing tasks and projects.
Result
With Business Online, Soolo has gained even better structure and control over customers, projects, quality assurance, and sales opportunities—helping the company sustain growth without major growing pains.
The challenge
The need for a proper deviation management system
Soolo was founded by three entrepreneurs in 2019 and has since navigated a demanding and complex scale-up phase. Such a growth journey places significant demands on an organization in terms of structure and control.
Karina Jortveit, responsible for business processes, quality, and HSE, explains that the organization needed more structure in order to improve internal control and follow up on sales opportunities and existing customers more effectively.
“The more we grew, and the more employees we brought in, the greater the need became for a shared platform—somewhere customer and project information could be made available to more people, rather than being stuck in someone’s head or on their personal computer.”
She adds: “And as we grow, we naturally take on customers who place higher demands on us as an organization—to have our internal processes and products in order.”
Soolo had been using a folder structure in OneDrive, which only some employees actively used.
“But not everyone even knew it existed. We realized we needed to be ‘forced’ to work more systematically.”
In short, they needed to get cloud and clear.
“We had a sense that the same mistakes were being made again and again. But we didn’t have the right tool to log those errors and improve.”
Alexander Hatlestad, CEO of Soolo, offers a fitting description of how the need for a management system became clear:
“Like other startups, you go through a maturity phase. At some point, Excel sheets and loosely structured folders just aren’t enough. You need a system.”
The Solution
Aside from the Microsoft 365 suite, Soolo didn’t have any formal management system. That’s when the question arose: “What do we actually need?”
Karina Jortveit explains that the organization needed to structure everything—from procedures and project management to internal control and deviation tracking—especially since this wasn’t just a matter of migrating from one system to another.
“We knew we had to get more structured, but what exactly did we need? And since we’re a startup, we also wondered how we were going to learn a new system while keeping up with everything else we had to do.”
The choice fell on Business Online.
“We have employees who are familiar with using quality systems, and others who’ve never worked with one—so we needed something simple and intuitive. Business Online had the modules we felt were most important to get in place from the start.”
Jortveit explains that they also had the chance to speak with customers already using Business Online and hear about their experiences. Since Soolo needed a system that was easy to use, it was a major plus that the solution is built on top of Microsoft 365.
“Most people are already familiar with Microsoft 365 and have worked with it before. So getting started wasn’t so intimidating…! On top of that, we got a really good impression of the Business Online team when they came to present to us. And their implementation plan was really solid.”
Implementation
One common question when introducing a new system is how the organization is supposed to learn it—while still managing all their other tasks and projects in the middle of a busy workday.
According to Jortveit, this is something Business Online takes seriously when planning the implementation process.
“We had one implementation meeting per week, with a dedicated topic each time. And then we got homework for the next session. We saw that as a positive thing, because it kind of ‘forced’ us to sit down, click through the system, and get familiar with it.”
That’s also when most of their questions came up—questions they could bring to the next session and get answered, Jortveit explains.
“It’s easier to zone out if you’re just listening to a consultant walk through the system. But when we were given tasks, we had to click through that module and try out the different features ourselves.”
Since Soolo hadn’t used a management system before, there was naturally a lot to get familiar with. That’s why it was especially helpful to receive tips and tricks from Business Online, says Jortveit.
“Aleksander, the system consultant from Business Online, gave us advice and showed how they’ve handled challenges themselves—and how they use the system today. Great for getting inspiration!”
When asked whether they faced any challenges during training, Jortveit replies:
“Not really challenges, but we were starting from scratch—building procedures, CRM, and so on. So it was actually a good thing to be ‘pushed’ into working on this, with the homework from one session to the next.”
Overall, Soolo found that Business Online provided a strong and well-structured implementation experience.
“They were accessible and flexible throughout the entire implementation phase.”
CEO Alexander Hatlestad agrees:
“Business Online is responsive. We’ve had some customization needs, and they’ve taken care of them. It’s a really good collaboration.”
The Result
The CRM module is critical for sales and continued growth
When Hatlestad stepped in as CEO in 2024, activating the CRM module in Business Online was the first thing he initiated—and it has been a key focus area ever since.
Business Online CRM makes it easy for Soolo to manage contact information, contracts, sales opportunities, and suppliers.
“In CRM, we log all the customer details and the contracts we enter into with them,” Hatlestad explains. “We’ve put a lot of focus on the CRM module, because sales is so critical for us in the phase we’re in.”
Hatlestad adds that all documentation, policies, procedures, and governing documents are now stored in Business Online.
“And we also use the approval workflow. If there are updates or changes, they go through an approval process, which makes everything traceable and easy to manage.”
One of the biggest challenges for Soolo during the scale-up phase was, as mentioned, keeping track of sales opportunities in a structured way.
“When I started as CEO, I didn’t even know the value of our pipeline,” Hatlestad admits. “I didn’t know how many opportunities we had or how they were being followed up. But now we can pull a report and look at those things. I can see, month by month, that the sales pipeline is growing.”
Easier reporting to the board
In a limited company, the CEO is obligated to keep the board informed about the company’s financial and operational performance. Strong reporting from the CEO enables the board to plan ahead, develop and follow up on strategies, and—together with the CEO—gain critical “snapshots” of the company’s current state.
Power BI sales reports in Business Online have made it easy for Hatlestad to keep the board continuously updated on the company’s customer and sales status:
“It’s easy to pull the data I need when I report to the board on what’s happened over the past month on the customer side—what we’ve sold, and what our biggest sales opportunities are.”
For a company whose core value is “the value of knowing,” having that kind of insight is absolutely essential.
Ensures no sales opportunities are lost
With Business Online, Soolo has gained detailed visibility into all sales opportunities—where they are in the sales funnel, when they should be followed up, and by whom. This ensures that no opportunities are lost due to poor or inconsistent follow-up.
“That insight helps us prioritize, and it makes my job easier as CEO, especially in terms of the reporting responsibilities I have. It’s a valuable tool for me and for the team working in sales. The sales reps use Business Online to create their monthly follow-up plans.”
Easier to eliminate recurring errors—and improve as a result
As mentioned at the start, Soolo needed a robust deviation management system that would allow the company to systematically log non-conformities.
“We realized we kept talking about the same issues over and over—without actually getting a handle on them,” Jortveit admits.“We needed to bring them to light, put focus on the patterns we were seeing, so we could get it down on paper and actually do something about it.”
Business Online is designed to make deviation reporting as simple and accessible as possible. Since many employees experience deviations while working in the field, it’s crucial that they can log them on mobile—right then and there—before they slip down the priority list.
Makes it easier to become ISO certified
Business Online enables companies to operate according to their own quality-assured processes, embedding quality at every stage of customer delivery. By using a quality management system based on ISO 9001, businesses can ensure consistent adherence to quality standards.
Hatlestad explains that while Soolo isn’t necessarily aiming for ISO certification right away, they’re aligning closely with the standards:
“If a customer requires us to be ISO certified, we want it to be very easy for us to get there. That’s why we work closely in line with ISO—and Business Online helps us on that path. We have full traceability for everything in the system.”
A strong management system ensures that growth doesn’t lose momentum
For startups, the temptation is often to go full speed ahead in pursuit of rapid growth. As a result, becoming more structured often takes a back seat—because the focus is all on momentum. But for Soolo, laying a solid foundation of quality management has been essential to sustaining that momentum, says Hatlestad.
“In other organizations I’ve seen, if you don’t put in that groundwork along the way, you lose all your momentum once you get to the next stage—because you don’t have the systems in place.”
Hatlestad emphasizes the importance of laying that foundation, even if it takes a little more time upfront:
“That foundation is something you can capitalize on further down the road—because then you’ve built the system and structure you need. You can choose not to do it, but you’ll end up paying for it later.”
Soolo has many exciting growth challenges ahead in the coming years—but keeping their cloud-based operations in order won’t be one of them.