Hedengren's popular online store will be developed into a customer portal that serves customers and partners more comprehensively. The development work, which spans the entire group, is led by the company's new IT development manager, e-commerce expert, Ari Vuorio
Hedengren's online store has been in use in Finland since 2017, and last year the service expanded to Norway. Now the online store is being developed into a customer portal that serves customers and partners even more comprehensively.
The goal is influenced by increased online transactions by customers and the company's recent strategy, which strongly emphasizes the development of digital services.
The first move in the online store's renewal took place at the end of 2024 when a new position was created for the upcoming development work. In the spring of 2025, Ari Vuorio, an e-commerce expert with an impressive career in e-commerce, product information system, and customer service development, was chosen for the new IT development manager role. Vuorio became interested in Hedengren due to the company's strong expertise and long development horizon. The opportunity to influence the corporation's online service development comprehensively also attracted him to the position.
The new IT development manager immediately reminds in the interview that developing the online store is not a single project but continuous service development, with the customer playing the main role.
"This work is not done based on the designer's vision but for the customer. My job is to listen to customers, partners, sellers, and product managers and build a service that combines all the necessary data and serves different customer groups as well as possible," Vuorio emphasizes.
The Service Expands, but Ease of Use Remains
According to the expert, the current, actively used online store provides a good foundation for development work.
"The goal is to create even more specific information for different types of customers so that the information, products, guides, software, and training that interest a particular customer can be found in one place," Vuorio describes.
Ease of use and data security will continue to be the guiding principles of development work. According to Vuorio, it is also important to consider country-specific regulations and different customer needs in the online store of a company operating in the Nordic countries.
"Portals will continue to be kept country-specific, even though deeper, joint development work is done in the background."
For customers, the comprehensive, around-the-clock order and information portal will bring time savings and smoother everyday life. The profiled portal also leads more quickly to the right expert if the customer needs personal service. Factors that make everyday life easier include, for example, making regular orders based on order history and ordering spare parts based on self-diagnosis of security systems.
"Also, simplifying navigation has a significant impact – finding the right product from a large and difficult-to-compare selection as quickly as possible," Vuorio adds.
Smart and Timely Online Store
Having familiarized himself with Hedengren's operations for just over a month, Vuorio is eagerly looking forward to starting the development work. The first step is to interview the company's own experts and then move on to mapping customer needs.
"The fascination of the task comes from the exceptionally wide customer base. On the Hedtec side, the customer can be a small private developer, and on the Hedengren Security side, an international real estate investment company. In addition, architects, electrical designers, contractors, and end customers need information and products," Vuorio says.
Development work is also defined by visions of how information will be built and searched in the future.
"On the consumer side, AI agents are currently becoming more common, searching for suitable products or services from large data masses based on people's wishes. The use of AI in information retrieval changes the design of user interfaces, as the online store must also serve machine searches," Vuorio says.
According to the expert, digital development is also characterized by the increase in voice communication.
"Maybe in the future, Hedengren's customer can simply say their product or software order to their phone, and bots will take care of the rest without the customer even having to open the online store portal," Vuorio smiles.