About Vara Säljservice
Vara Säljservice is a family-owned company in Vara, Västra Götaland — with roots in the industry going back to 1980. For over 40 years they have supplied consumables to manufacturers and contractors in Skaraborg and the surrounding regions.
The range is broad: fasteners, abrasives, protective equipment, welding supplies, packaging and technical consumables. They deliver directly to customers and also offer consignment stock — inventory tailored to the customer’s operation, where you only pay for what you use.
This is a business that runs on relationships and delivery precision. Customers expect the right item, in the right quantity, when they need it. Not almost. Not roughly.
The challenge
Purchasing is at the core of what Vara Säljservice does — but it is also one of the most time-consuming parts. Every day meant manually checking stock levels, judging what needed ordering, contacting suppliers, chasing unconfirmed orders and handling discrepancies when deliveries did not match.
Purchasing is not hard. It is mostly keeping track of things, following up, and making sure the right things happen in the right order. But it takes time. Time I would rather spend talking to customers or handling things that actually require judgement.
The problem was not a lack of competence. It was that the competence was pointed in the wrong direction.
Why they chose a digital coworker
Henrik had seen demos of AI tools. He was sceptical.
A lot of what I had seen looks good in a presentation. But when you ask how it works with your own ERP, how logins are handled, what happens if something goes wrong — the answers get vague. It did not feel serious.
What he was looking for was something that actually integrated with the systems they already used. No parallel system. Nothing that required them to change how they worked.
What convinced him was not a demo — it was that the system was already running in production at other companies, connected to their ERP, with a clear description of what was logged and why.
It felt like they had thought about the things that actually matter in a real company. Not just built something that looks nice.
What Nora actually does
Nora is configured specifically for the processes at Vara Säljservice and handles three main tasks every day:
- Monitoring stock levels — continuously checks balances against configured reorder points and generates purchasing proposals based on supplier agreements and purchase history.
- Order handling towards suppliers — sends purchase orders to the right supplier, with the right item numbers and quantities. Everything is logged.
- Delivery follow-up — chases unconfirmed orders and flags discrepancies, for example late deliveries or quantities that do not match the order.
I notice it most in the morning. I used to start the day by going through what needed ordering and checking whether confirmations had come in. Now I open the computer and it is already done.
The effect day to day
Vara Säljservice does not measure Nora’s value in kronor saved per hour. Henrik is clear about that.
That is the wrong way to count. It is about where I put my attention. Purchasing admin demanded time and mental energy every day, even when nothing was wrong. Now it does not.
- Purchase orders go out the same day the need arises, with no manual review
- Fewer late deliveries thanks to consistent follow-up
- A couple of hours a day freed from routine purchasing admin
- Nothing has been dropped during holiday periods or peak load
How they see it now
The next step is to connect handling of incoming order confirmations and discrepancy handling on received deliveries.
We have not replaced anyone. We have added a colleague who takes care of things we should not be spending time on. If we could have afforded to hire someone just for that kind of work, we would have done it long ago. Now we have.
Vara Säljservice is not a tech company. They have no in-house IT and no digitalisation strategy on paper. They are a company that delivers industrial components and wants to spend its time on what creates value for customers.
Nora is one step in that direction.