The development project of the Nordic Works Collective brings together the resources of young design offices by developing a new intelligent digital platform for resource sharing. 

What kind of problem is the project trying to solve?

As design work is diversifying, a wide selection of tools is required. These tools should be conveniently and flexibly available also to small design offices. In this Nordic Works Backoffice - Design office as a service project, we are developing an intelligent digital platform for sharing resources and services for running a business. Such a back office provides support to start-ups and makes it possible to level the resources of growing, larger member companies.

The Nordic Works Collective is a network company founded by young design offices in the construction sector. The collective currently consists of ten growing companies employing a total of 60 experts from the construction sector.

Objective: Helping small enterprises on the pathway to growth and internationalisation!

The Nordic Works Backoffice - Design office as a service project strives for efficient resource sharing with the help of a network of designers and a digital platform. Our aim is to enable small businesses to become profitable and grow, to improve the quality of design and, in future, to enable more efficient export of design. Nordic Works is a network of companies that shares resources like a large company, but operates as flexibly as a freelancer.

Nordic Works started its operations in 2013 and has since then been reforming operating practices in the construction sector: we have already sold more than 50 interactive design sprints to local authorities across Finland. These fast-paced design events have provided further work to the companies in the collective and created a valuable network of experts. 

In future, Nordic Works will offer its member network the infrastructure of a consulting firm.

What is done in this project?

We will develop the digital platform of Nordic Works Backoffice in three stages: the exploration, development and pilot stages. The exploration and development stages will be implemented in 2017and the pilot stage in 2018.

In the exploration stage, a member community will be formed for which the current member companies will survey a sufficiently wide network of interested companies in order to provide a wide range of Backoffice users from the very beginning. A social media group for exchanging information and proposing wishes for the development of Backoffice will be founded for the company network. An employee, an executive board and an advisory board will also be appointed in the exploration stage.

In the development stage, the employee will draw up a detailed business plan for Backoffice, design the usability of the pilot platform and draw up preliminary agreements with the future member companies.

In the pilot stage, the digital platform will be introduced and the member companies that have drawn up a preliminary agreement will enter their own resource information in it. The resources of each company (workforce, software, equipment, facilities, professional literature, specialisation) can be freely viewed and reserved by the other member companies on jointly agreed conditions.

Who benefits?

All member companies of Nordic Works Collective will benefit from the digital platform developed in the project.