News
- Johannes Eriksson
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- Company news
- 4 min reading
This year marks 30 years since two brothers from Malå started AM System. One was a visionary, the other could make things happen - together they would go further than they could have imagined. This is the story of how AM System came to be, from the early years in Malå to today's web-based management system.
As this text is being written, fall is coming to Västerbotten - for the thirtieth time in AM System's history. But this year is different. At the offices in Skellefteå and Umeå, there is a nervous anticipation among the employees. Many of them will soon be taking to the stage at our "Onstage" event to tell us where AM is heading - all in front of our customers who have traveled to Skellefteå from all over Sweden.
The idea of Onstage is that customers should get the chance to understand what is happening with our management system at the same time as we, by opening up and inviting faster, will learn how we can continue to steer AM System on a course that is right for the customers.
Onstage is a good place to put down a pin to understand where AM System is today, 30 years after its inception. Nowadays, we are central to many customers' quality work. We see our management system as a bloodstream, the life-giving system that helps customers manage their businesses and creates the right conditions for employees to do the right thing in their daily work. We are of course proud to have earned a place in our customers' lives that makes them willing to visit us in Skellefteå to explore how we can create even more order together.
Celebrating 30 years as a company is cool, and we celebrate in many different ways. Among other things, we have printed our own beer, "Brorsan", with a label that tells the story of us - a story that starts far from today's AM System.
The visionary and the hustler
There's an old truth in Silicon Valley, that every startup needs a kind of holy trinity: a visionary, a hacker and a hustler. Anders and Mats Hultdin nailed 2 out of 3 when they stood idle one summer day in the late 80s on the driveway in Malå, in the corner where Västerbotten meets Lapland. Anders, who is 5 years older than Mats, was the visionary, a cautious, almost philosophical guy with big ideas. His younger brother Mats, on the other hand, was the hustler, a tough guy who could sell anything. This summer, they both needed something to do.
In the 1980s, Malå was home to more than 4,000 people who all knew who the Hultdins were. Anders and Mats' father, Ove, was one of the founders of the village's largest industry, which still manufactures tools for the forestry industry today. For that matter, there was no question of any advantages for the brothers, on the contrary, Ove wanted Anders and Mats to go their own way. Perhaps that's why he looked so worried as he stood working on the driveway with his own invention to lift the roof box from the car while the brothers watched restlessly. Maybe that's why he pointed to the invention and said, "Why don't you make a business out of this?"
The box lift
Today it's hard to believe that AM System once sold a device to help customers lift the roof box from the car, but that's how it is. Long before management systems, AM was all about the Boxlift, a product that nurtured Anders and Mats by teaching them everything from how taxes work to how to do business with big companies like Volvo.
In the early years, entrepreneurship for Anders and Mats was mostly about proving to themselves, their family and the community that they could make it on their own. Once Boxliften had become a stable business, the brothers needed new challenges. Soon they started selling all sorts of things they thought were promising, such as shelving systems, pressure washers and industrial vacuum cleaners. It wasn't until 1995 that they ran into something that would capture their imaginations and hearts.
The internet
If we draw a straight line from the start of AM System's journey through the early years of entrepreneurship, the line does not seem to be heading towards the pin, AM System 2019. However, if we zoom in on the year 1995, something happens that will change the direction of the company's journey.
The brothers, who by this time had started selling computers, were at a trade fair in Stockholm for a demonstration of the Filemaker program. The show ended, the room emptied - but the brothers sat motionless, staring into the empty screen with the feeling that they had peered into the future. Filemaker could be used to do anything, and software could be a far more important and easier product to sell than hardware. The spark was lit.
To the left Mats Carpenter (formerly Hultdin)
Although the brothers from that day on took a new direction with software, some things were still recognizable in AM System. For example, they had always gravitated towards helping other companies, often keeping order in various ways. Perhaps the concern for other companies was because entrepreneurs were so close to their own DNA. After all, the Hultdins were entrepreneurs. The programs AM System began to create in Filemaker were therefore about helping companies to create order - this time in their documents and processes.
At the same time as Anders and Mats began to take an interest in software, the internet made its entrance in earnest, which further pushed the company towards its current position. The brothers quickly had a crucial insight: the programs would be web-based. This meant that the visionary and hustler could no longer do without his hacker.
The hacker
We call him Joppe. He's been with us since 1997 and is a big reason why we are where we are today. Without Joppe, we would never have been able to build what we wanted, or get the stability over the years that makes us the reliable player we need to be to gain trust in the quality world.
After Joppe's arrival, we started developing our own programs. And a few years into the 00s, today's AM System took shape in earnest. We continued to develop the program with various new parts, always with a focus on creating digital order for companies in the business processes.
A milestone in this later period of our history is 2011. That's when we decided to stop selling AM System as a license and instead start offering it as a subscription. That step changed a lot for us, we basically had to redesign the whole company and find more people to take us where we wanted to go.
In recent years, we've grown in all sorts of ways - not least in awareness of what customers need. We are putting more and more focus on innovation to be able to carry our customers in a world that is changing in a way that makes Malå 1989 feel much further away than 30 years.
But 30 years ago it is. The day Dad Ove raised his hand and pointed to the invention in the driveway. The movement that started it all.
