SILVER IN THE SLIPSTREAM OF BIG BROTHER
25 April 2002 - NNE A/S

NNE's début in the image poll is a grand 2nd place. Family ties with Novo Nordisk are part of the explanation.

The yearly image poll offered a downright surprise in the absolute top. The company with the second best image among 100 participants was NNE, participating in the image poll for the first time as independent company. To readers that momentarily knit their brows in wonder we hasten to say that NNE is short of Novo Nordisk Engineering, independent consultancy engineering company and fully owned subsidiary of Novo Nordisk A/S.

The group of engineers at NNE account for approx. 70 per cent of the more than 1400 employees, so it is a hardcore engineering company that went straight to second place in the image poll of 'Ingeniøren'.

But even though NNE compared to big brother Novo Nordisk is even more a company of engineers, managing director Hans Ole Voigt is not blind to the effect of being related to the extremely positive brand of Novo Nordisk.

»An important factor is presumably that we are part of Novo. We are a bit in their slipstream, so we are presumed to have the same values. A responsible and ambitious company, in our case supplying sound and reliable consultancy services. I want us to stand out with a clear, independent profile. I think we do, as basically we are a completely different type of company. We are consultants and execute projects and do not have the production and research that Novo Nordisk has,» says managing director Hans Ole Voigt.

As a direct result of the enormous growth of the mother company now and in coming years, also NNE is extremely busy building new production facilities and employing more engineers. In that light the image result could not have come at a better time for Hans Ole Voigt, who initially admits that he has had concerns as to whether NNE was sufficiently visible to compete with the big players.

»We are not a company that is constantly analysed in the financial newspapers. But this result is an enormous encouragement to management and employees. We are proud, but it also puts us under pressure to keep the position. NNE must become even more visible,« he states.

If you go into detail it does show that exactly the questions of communication and visibility are areas where NNE can improve, with a position as number 11 among qualified engineers and 16 among students.

It puts focus on a central strategic challenge for NNE in the near future. To take advantage of the positive ties to the Novo family and the side effects of an extremely attractive image. Concurrently NNE must work on an independent profile of NNE as an ambitious company with a clear and well-defined goal: To be the best engineering partner and plant supplier within the biotechnological and pharmaceutical industries.

Part of this manoeuvre internally and externally at NNE is a new and independent visual identity. A new company design and own brand were introduced in October last year to stress the striving towards an own profile. Since NNE in 1991 was made an independent subsidiary, the company has expanded its clientele from Novo Nordisk to numerous other customers within the biotechnological and pharmaceutical industries.

Hans Ole Voigt describes the company spirit of NNE as the will and ability to solve complex assignments in teams. It is always a challenge to construct a facility and make everything function. And the current huge projects for Novo Nordisk are complex and challenging, he stresses. » Engineers are roused on their technical ambitions, though we are not in the traditional sense an innovative company. I am convinced that an important factor to attract engineers is a commercial success. We must show that things are going well« he emphasizes.

And they do. During the past two years the number of NNE employees has doubled, at a price. The expansion puts pressure on the organisation and has increased focus on the integration of new employees. It also put a burden on the experienced employees, which managers handle with more or less success.

The growth is also the attention of 'Virksomhedsgruppen', a group of approx. 1400 academic employees at Novo Nordisk and NNE. Henrik Munch Sørensen, electronic engineer, is deputy chairman of the group. Every day he meets new colleagues, meaning a less familiar working environment than it used to be.

The new engineers ask questions on job contents and career possibilities. Many of them have managerial ambitions, and they can be met, he says. An engineer with NNE can quickly become responsible of quality and economy, says Henrik Munch Sørensen.

Like the managing director, also Henrik Munch Sørensen is proud of the good place that NNE received in the image poll:

»We are part of the Novo culture, and we contribute just as much as our colleagues. It means a lot to our engineers that they contribute to producing useful products. People connect your person to the company you work for. In that connection we can straighten ourselves up.«

Novo Nordisk Engineering is slowly but surely expanding its repertoire. During the past three years the company has been actively working on getting new biotechnological and pharmaceutical customers outside the Novo family, and projects for external clients now account for 10 per cent of the turnover, including NovoZymes. We must use our expertise to increase the share of external clients. As a minimum the share must be doubled within an unidentified number of years, according to managing director Hans Ole Voigt.

The increased external activities may also change the status of NNE compared to other consulting engineering companies. So far NNE has not been considered competitors and colleagues, as they have mainly performed in-house functions at Novo Nordisk. But when NNE steps out on the market, it is obvious to encourage NNE to join the guild, says John Cederberg, director of the Danish 'Forening af Rådgivende Ingeniører'.

'NNE has had a special status and has not be operating on market conditions. They have had the size that Novo Nordisk wanted, and Novo, a qualified client, has reasonably enough only seldom let NNE compete with others', he says. NNE has a large group of in-house consultants, engineers and others, that are hired and formally employed with other companies, in some cases for many years. That is not normal practice in the industry, but it has been possible, as NNE has been outside the normal market competition, stresses John Cederberg.

The grand debut in the image poll does not come as a surprise to John Cederberg. He considers NNE a company with many interesting and knowledge-based job possibilities and thereby an attractive company to young engineers.

http://nne.dk/

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