Örnsköldsvik Municipality (Örnsköldsviks kommun) is located in northern Sweden’s High Coast region and is home to around 55,000 residents.
Known for its innovative industries, strong community values, and stunning natural surroundings, the municipality combines tradition with progress — driving digital transformation to serve citizens better and build a smarter, more connected future.
The municipality’s IT development team, led by Michael Bergström, is responsible for connecting a wide range of systems and automating processes across education, social services, infrastructure, and administrative operations.
Like many municipalities in Sweden, Örnsköldsvik relied on older, on-premise systems that couldn’t easily communicate with one another. Connecting them required significant manual work and technical complexity.
“We have a lot of legacy systems that need to talk to other systems. To make that possible, we needed newer technology than what we had before.”
— Mikael Bergström, Digital Development Manager, Örnsköldsvik Municipality, Sweden
Beyond internal modernization, the team wanted to make integrations reusable — not just for themselves, but across the Swedish public sector.
“We wanted something that would make it possible for municipalities to interchange solutions with each other, so every municipality doesn’t have to develop everything from scratch, but can help each other build automated processes.”
After evaluating the market, Örnsköldsvik selected Frends iPaaS — an integration and automation platform built in the Nordics for organizations that need control, transparency, and collaboration.
The decision came down to several key factors:
A modern architecture supporting both compiled and script-based processes
Ease of use and a visual, low-code approach suited to a small, agile team
Data control, with the ability to store and transform data locally — without relying on external cloud services
And perhaps most importantly, openness and collaboration, making it possible to share integrations and automation templates with other municipalities.
“When we first talked to the Frends team, there weren’t many municipalities using it yet — maybe just a handful of us. But because of the people behind Frends, and the confidence in the technology, it felt right. It’s open, usable, and just works the way we need it to.”
The team also appreciated Frends’ modern architecture, supporting both compiled and script-based processes — allowing deeper technical control while remaining highly visual and user-friendly.
Developers now have a clear, graphical view of integrations, while still being able to dive into low-code customization, test efficiently, and monitor running processes in real time.
“Developers have much better control thanks to the graphical view. But we also have the power to go low-code, test easily, and see feedback directly from the platform."
“Now we’re expanding that access so business analysts and process owners can also view and understand the processes — it becomes a shared language between developers and the people improving the way we work.”
One standout example is the automation of parental consent for children’s vaccinations. Each year, around 4,000 children in Örnsköldsvik need vaccination permissions — previously a slow, paper-based process involving weeks of reminders and manual data entry.
“It used to take one to two weeks with papers and scanning. Now it’s fully automated — the parents get an SMS, log in, give their permission, and the data goes straight into the journal system,” Michael explains.
“The process now takes about two minutes instead of weeks.”
This level of automation doesn’t just save time — it reduces errors, improves communication, and frees up municipal staff to focus on higher-value work.
Örnsköldsvik is also leading by example in replacing outdated platforms such as Microsoft BizTalk, which many municipalities still depend on but which has reached end-of-life.
“Our local energy company still uses BizTalk but is now migrating to Frends,” says Michael.
“In the energy sector, BizTalk has been big — but with its end-of-life and cloud restrictions around sensitive information, Frends is the perfect local, secure alternative.”
The migration project is ongoing and expected to continue into next year — modernizing several systems while optimizing the processes at the same time.
For Michael and his team, Frends is more than a platform — it’s a foundation for shared innovation across the public sector.
“If I were to recommend Frends, I’d say: if you want an easy-to-manage, stable, and secure platform, this is the one to check out, and if you need help getting started, we can even share some of our ready-made automations. We can collaborate — it’s a whole ecosystem of developing automations together.”