iteam becomes KLERI: Aiming to remove unnecessary complexity in the IT industry

On September 18, iteam became KLERI.

At the same time, the business in Norway and Sweden is being united under a single brand. However, according to CEO Michael Jacobs, the change is about much more than a new name and a new visual identity.

– The IT industry has become very good at technology, but not necessarily as good at making it simple for customers. Customers have to deal with increasingly complex technology choices, heightened security requirements, artificial intelligence, cloud, data, and a large number of vendors. Our job is not to turn the customer into an expert on all of this. Our job is to make the complexity manageable, says Michael Jacobs, CEO of KLERI.

Local presence, shared expertise

KLERI has 46 locations in Norway, from Svalbard in the north to Kristiansand in the south, and is present in ten locations in Sweden. This geographical presence is a central part of the strategy, but the company also wants to challenge what it means to be a "local IT provider."

The goal is for customers to maintain proximity to people they know, while expertise is shared and made available across geographies to a greater extent.

– Your zip code should not determine the expertise you have access to. A customer in a smaller municipality or town should be able to get the same specialized expertise in areas like security, cloud, artificial intelligence, or the modern workplace as a customer in Oslo, Stockholm, or Gothenburg. At the same time, the customer should still have people nearby who know their business. That is the combination we want to build on, says Jacobs.

He believes this also challenges a traditional dichotomy in the IT industry between large, centralized environments and smaller, local providers.

– We don't believe customers should have to choose between proximity and expertise. We will manage both.

From products to comprehensive delivery

As part of this effort, the company has also sharpened its business strategy and consolidated its services into five areas: helping customers work smarter, stay secure, keep their business running, connect technology, and create momentum through AI and automation, among other things.

At the same time, the company is moving away from standalone product and technology deliveries toward more comprehensive and ongoing services.

– Technology is increasingly a continuous part of business, not something you buy as standalone projects every three or five years. That places different demands on us as a provider. We must understand the customer's business, take greater responsibility over time, and constantly ensure that the technology actually works and creates value, says Jacobs.

KLERI will deliver services across public cloud, private cloud and data center platforms, and customer-owned environments. Artificial intelligence and OT security are among the areas the group identifies as strategically important moving forward.

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A name for a larger change

The work on the new brand and positioning was done in collaboration with the branding agency Bold, while Anorak developed the creative communication concept. In parallel, the company has worked on strategy, service portfolio, and how expertise is organized and made available across Norway and Sweden.

CMO Espen Viskjer says it was important that the name change did not become an isolated communication project.

– The least interesting thing we could have done was to change the logo on the door and continue exactly as before. We have used this process to ask a bigger question: What should customers actually be able to expect from us? The answer is about proximity, expertise, and making technology easier to deal with. KLERI should be a customer promise, not just a new name, says Viskjer.

He believes the IT industry has a responsibility to make it easier for customers to navigate a market that is becoming increasingly specialized.

Complexity is not going away. Artificial intelligence, security, cloud, data, and regulation are doing quite the opposite. But customers shouldn't have to experience all that complexity themselves. That is where we as an industry need to improve. The best technology companies aren't necessarily the ones that show the customer how complicated everything is, but those that manage to make the complicated understandable and applicable.

A brand in Norway and Sweden

The name change also means that operations in Norway and Sweden are being consolidated under the KLERI name. For customers, the transition should be straightforward: the people, relationships, and points of contact remain the same, while the company aims to make it easier to draw on expertise from across the entire organization.

– We have grown significantly in recent years. Now, the next phase is about getting even more out of what we have built. Not by creating more complexity, but by connecting people and expertise better and making it easier to be a customer with us. That is essentially the core of KLERI, says Jacobs.‍

About KLERI

KLERI, formerly iteam, is a Norwegian-Swedish IT group with operations in 45 locations in Norway and ten in Sweden. The company provides services including modern workplace solutions, IT security, operations, networking and communication, cloud, artificial intelligence, and automation.

KLERI makes technology simpler for its customers. With a local presence and expertise across Norway and Sweden, the company delivers IT services that create value and simplify the everyday lives of its customers.

In just a few years, the group has grown from approximately 170 million NOK to about 2 billion NOK in revenue through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions. KLERI combines a local presence with specialist teams that work across the organization in Norway and Sweden.

KLERI is owned by Equip Capital AS.