Anticimex powers IoT with IFS.ai Anticimex is a leading specialist in preventive pest control and related services, with operations in 17 countries and around 5,500 employees. It has shown growth every year since its inception in 1934 as a Swedish bed bug control company.
Driven by strong organic growth and over 80 acquisitions, it has About Anticimex increased its revenue by more than 60 percent over the past three Founded in 1934 Anticimex started out years. The market for pest control is growing fast. Trends such as as a bed bug control business. It soon increased travel, urbanization and increased waste production diversified to offer a wide range of pest are driving this growth. However, the service industry today faces control. Today Anticimex operates in 17 strict regulatory controls over the types of chemicals it can use. countries around the world providing not These developments provide opportunities for those pest control only pest control but also food safety, companies that have the capacity and scale required to develop building environment services, fire and offer digital and scalable preventive systems. protection and insurance.
www.anticimex.com The growing pains of pest control Anticimex has a varied offering for home owners and businesses. It carries out pest control covering a broad range of creatures—mostly rodents and insects, though in the far east the firm regularly deals with exotic dangerous animals such as cobras. It carries out housing inspections when people buy or sell About Microsoft property which includes fire prevention, dehumidification, energy Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @ Microsoft) inspections, title transfer and insurance against latent defects. is the leading platform and productivity It also offers hygiene and washroom services; however, these are company for the mobile-first, cloud-first run separately from the pest control business using different world, and its mission is to empower vehicles and technicians, and not necessarily delivered at the every person and every organization same sites. on the planet to achieve more. Out of 5,500 employees, 3,000-3,500 are technicians working in www.microsoft.com the field at customer sites. Anticimex technicians use handheld mobile solutions enabling them to stay out in the field rather than having to go back to the office to file reports. With such a broad reaching offering and a highly-distributed network of technicians and customers, Anticimex needs a highly robust and scalable ERP solution.
In Sweden, which represents Anticimex’s most sophisticated
business operation, IFS has delivered a fully integrated ERP solution for more than 10 years with Anticimex taking advantage of the full scope of services and modules on offer. The firm’s Finnish operation uses IFS Field Service Management™ and IFS Financials™. A large challenge for Anticimex, says Group COO Ebba Bonde, has resulted from the company’s relatively recent rapid expansion and its fragmented IT landscape. “We’ve expanded extensively over the last five years and we haven’t slowed down,” says Bonde. “to support our rapid expansion we have chosen IFS as one of our preferred solutions.” While Anticimex faces universal challenges associated In partnership with Microsoft with ensuring excellence in customer service across a rapidly growing business, it is also faces challenges unique to the pest Anticimex is transforming its control industry. First, a rising need to be more environmentally business with an IoT solution from sensitive in terms of the pesticides it uses—this is both a IFS, including the IFS IoT Business regulatory and customer demand. Second, pests over time Connector, which utilizes are becoming a lot more resilient to traditional pesticides. plug-and-play connectivity with the Microsoft Azure IoT Suite for device communications and data IoT and IFS.ai deliver smarter services analytics. To address the challenges posed by pesticides and help control rodent activity, Anticimex has developed and manufactures Anticimex SMART high-tech digital traps, sensors and cameras. The traps are humane, environmentally friendly, and effective. In addition to this, they are also fully connected. This means that technicians are no longer required to visit traps in the field to check whether they have been triggered. The data is fully integrated into IFS.ai across Finland, letting technicians know which traps to visit in addition to providing the optimal route. Cutting out unnecessary travel has also helped reduce Anticimex’s environmental footprint.
Not only has the Anticimex SMART IFS-enabled Internet of
Things (IoT) solution, the IFS IoT Business Connector, created a tremendous amount of efficiency for the business, it has also enabled Anticimex to analyze data in a completely new way. Supplying power to IoT devices, particularly in remote locations, is a common challenge. Connectivity between devices enables them to automatically let technicians know when power is running low and when batteries need to be recharged.
By analyzing the patterns of when and how often certain traps Benefits seen using IFS run out of power, Anticimex is able to discern which batteries should be taken out of commission altogether rather than • Highly robust solution recharged. This saves Anticimex money and helps improve • Scalable customer service since traps last longer between charges. • Efficient route planning tool “Rather than technicians scrambling around trying to figure out • Integrated with IoT platform which trap they need to address, they now know exactly which trap to address and when they need to go out to which customer,” says Jussi Ylinen, CEO, Anticimex Finland. “All this makes the technicians agile, but also us as a company and we can address our customers’ issues a lot quicker. Working with IFS in the IoT project they were responsive, they were very cognizant of what we wanted and they listened to us a lot so they could adapt quickly to our needs.”
What’s next? Find out more
In addition to moving its systems into the cloud over the coming years, Anticimex is currently upgrading IFS in Sweden. “We did Further information contact a scan of the whole marketplace and couldn’t find another your local IFS office or visit solution that would provide us with route-based services that our website, ifs.com fit as well as IFS. We are aiming to carry out a lot of automated routing, which includes workforce scheduling. IFS provides a very robust solution with IFS.ai Planning & Scheduling Optimization™,” says Bonde.
