One great year has come to an end!


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It is almost one year since I started as a management trainee at Handheld. I remember how exciting it was to enter the office and meeting all my great colleagues. The first month me and Christian spent most of our time in the conference room with colleagues who educated us in products, logistics, organisational structure, strategy and much more. During that time a hunger grew to go out and implement everything we learned and believe me, we got that chance. After only 5 week we went to Cebit in Hannover, this was our first chance to meet with customers and potential customers. From Cebit and all the way through the program we worked with sales and different internal projects. The program has taken us through many European countries and to USA.

In USA we have really been tested, our main task here has been sales and business development but at the same time we are managing projects in Sweden. I can tell you that it is not always easy to do this from the other side of the earth. It has been a very good experience to meet clients here and to see the variety of ways than conduct meetings in, I have held presentations in everything from nice board rooms to sitting in a diner and showing products between dishes. I have realized that you cant sell in a standardized way, you need to adapt to situations and to customers.

Right now we are wrapping up our work here in USA and prepare to leave for Sweden. A year goes by very fast, I am looking forward to starting a new one at Handheld and also starting my new postion (more on this later).

Merry Christmas everyone!

/Johan

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Moved my office to Starbucks! Closer to the coffee…


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Hey!

Two weeks in US we are finally starting to get into the american lifestyle. After one and a half week in the office I have finally started to travel around and visiting partners and potential partners. Right know I am sitting at a Starbucks in Seattle, the sun is shining and my white Mustang is standing outside. Soon I will head downtown an grab some dinner before I go to the hotel to work some more.

I really enjoy working like this, instead of spending most of the time in the office I have gone mobile… As long as I can find a internet connection (and coffee) I can work.

This was just a short breifing, a longer “novell” is coming this WEEKEND after the football game between OSU and Arizona. Go Beavers!

Have a nice week!

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One grande, non fat, two pump, pumpkin spice latte!


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Now me and Christian has set up shop in USA. We work from a small city called Corvallis, the city has around 50 000 people and around half of them are students at Oregon State University.

After a long flight we managed to get through customs at the airport and got pick up by Mike Zellman, VP of Business Development at Handheld. Mike showd us around and took us out for food and drinks. After this and a visit to the office to meet Amy Urban who is Director of Marketing me and Christian went home and passed out.

The next day we got the task to build our own office with desk, chairs, etc. This took a while but after a few (read many) hours we where done. After that we went to pick up our company car, the car was apparently in the work shop. How do you solve this? You solve it by taking a Mustang instead of the other car! Happy as few we felt that we should take the car for a drive and drove 56 miles (90 km) to Woodburn to buy some clothes.

After three days of work it was time for our first weekend in US. On Saturday we went one more time to Woodburn to buy some more clothes and on our way back we decided that we needed to join a gym. We found one close to were we live, Timberhill Athletics Club. This was a really nice training facility with squash, basketball, gym and pool. The only thing left to do nos is to actually go and work out at the gym. On Sunday we took the car and headed for Newport to check out some nice surf spots and we can tell that it looked nice! We will head out there next weekend to do some surfing.

This is all for now, see you again soon!

/Johan

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It is hot in Holland!


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I am currently working out of Handhelds office in Deventer (Holland), where one of our subsidiaries is located. Right now it is just above 30 degrees in my office and all I can think of is grabbing a drink and   watch the game between Holland and Brazil. I have been working here for a week to get an insight in the sales process and also get some deeper knowledge on our coming projects and products. It has been a good week, very intense and even though I did not expect it I have seen some cultural differences compared to Sweden.

During the last weeks a lot of things have happened. First we had our yearly Business Partner Conference in the beginning of June. At the Business Partner Conference all major partners that we have throughout the world are invited for a few days of seminars, product launches and mingling. This year it was held at the brand new Elite Hotel Marine Tower. After a long day of seminars a boat took us out for a four our ride in Stockholm archipelago, a very appreciated event.

Handheld Crew and Partners

This week Handheld got certified according to the ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 14001:2004 standards. Me and Christian has worked as project leader on this project. Which has meant no sleep for the last few weeks, we have for real been living in our office. Even though it is quite exhausting to work like this it is very motivating when you can see the end not too far ahead.

That’s all for me right know!

/J

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Fairs, projects and time abroad!


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Who am I?: Firstly I want to give you a brief introduction of myself. I was born and raised in Ullstorp, a small village outside Kristianstad in Skåne. In 2005 I moved to Jönköping to study economics at Jönköping International Business School (JIBS). During my studies I spent one semester at Edhec in Nice and one semester at RMIT in Melbourne. If you get the chance from your uni to go abroad, take it! When I am of work I spend most of the time training, running, cycling or sailing. I also spend a lot of time with my friends.

Fairs, seminars and ISO: During the last weeks me and Christian has been traveling around Sweden, visiting fairs and seminars. Last week we attended a seminar on International sales with ITM in Malmö, here we discussed all the dangerous pitfalls that exists in international trade.

The Office: As you probably know we are working on different internal projects. Our projects are now well on the way and in some cases we can clearly see the end. Working with this project based approach gives us a chance to learn and develop different segments of the organization at the same time. At least for me it is more exciting to work with different tasks and this is not something that is only for the trainee program, our whole organization apply the project approach when we work. How work is conducted within SMEs is very crucial due to the limited number of people and the financial limits, the resources need to be allocated as efficient as possible.

What’s next?: The coming weeks we will continue our work on ISO 9001 and 14001. We will also take part in the product development process. In our trainee program we are going to spend some time abroad, first one week in Deventer, Holland with Handheld Benelux BV., then three months in Corvallis, USA with Handheld US Inc. We are currently in the planning phase for these months abroad.

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Handheld trainee blog is up and running!


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Christoffer in action!

Christoffer in action!

Relaxing for a minute.

Relaxing for a minute.

The best rugged tablet in the world.

The best rugged tablet in the entire world.

Handheld trainee blog is up and running!

Firstly we would like to welcome you to our blog. The idea of Handhelds blog is to give you as a student or graduate a deeper insight into how we work within our program and company. You have probably heard about how trainee programs work and how they shape the individuals into their organization, forget that here we the employees shape the organization!

For you who do not know what Handheld do I will give you a brief introduction. Handheld is one of the fastest growing rugged computer companies, we supply our rugged computers to a wide range of users. You can see our entire product line on www.handheldgroup.com.

Me and my colleague Christian joined Handheld Group AB in the middle of January 2010. From there we have gone through extensive product training, project management, market research and sales training. On our schedule for the near future we have finance at Nordea, more sales training, more project management and also studies within export management at ITM. You can read more about the ITM Export Management program on www.itmworldwide.org.

In the beginning of February the whole Handheld team went to Zillertal in Austria for a few days of skiing and fun. For me who never had been skiing before this was really exciting and I was quite confident until I was on one of the summits, IT WAS STEEP! But both me and Christian survived and where gladly back in the office the day after we left Zillertal.

Last week me and Christian went to Hannover and CeBit. For you who don’t know, CeBit is the largest IT-fair in the world. If you cannot find the gadgets you are looking for here they do not exist.

We have really got a great start of our careers and now live by the rule “If you cannot find it in your outlook calendar it will not happen”!

Have a great day and see you soon!

/Johan

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