How Ignite Connected Parlametric With Public Sector

Through 66 tailored one-to-one meetings facilitated by Ignite Nordic, Parlametric has initiated 22 collaborations with 15 different organizations. These connections have helped the company find its niche, build valuable customer references and create opportunities for continued growth.

Looking Beyond the Numbers

Parlametric’s story began as a research project at Lund University in 2017, built around a simple problem with traditional surveys: a number rarely tells you the whole story.

“The idea was to start analyzing free-text responses and only work with open questions, so that surveys could become more like an in-depth interview,” says Rebecka Komét, Business Developer and Public Sector Account Manager at Parlametric.

The company developed its own method for language analysis and applied the latest applicable AI technology to it. Over time, the original idea evolved from analyzing feedback after an interaction to learning from the interaction itself.

“We developed the idea further through the collaborations we had and the requests we received. Instead of sending out a survey after a conversation, we could analyze what was actually said in the interaction and turn that into statistics.”

Today, that conversation analysis is Parlametric’s main service.

Turning Conversations into Data

For municipalities and public housing companies, thousands of interactions through phone calls, emails and chats contain information about what people need, where processes create friction and what could be improved.

For recorded calls, audio is transferred through encrypted channels before being transcribed and anonymised. AI analyses the content and identifies subjects, questions and recurring issues, which can then be aggregated into statistics. A recurring problem mentioned in individual conversations can thereby become information an organization can act on.

“Our service combines language analysis and AI technology with human analysts who carry out quality controls,” Rebecka explains.

That human-in-the-loop approach has been part of Parlametric’s development from an early stage.

“We were quite early with AI, and we learned pretty quickly that if you let AI decide everything on its own, it will go off the rails. So quality assurance has been a very important part of our service, both to ensure good results and to create solutions adapted to the customer.”

A Meeting That Opened a New Market

As Parlametric moved from research towards commercialization, it was still exploring where its technology could create the most value. A meeting with Uppsala Municipality, facilitated by Ignite Nordic in June 2019, became an important step towards the company’s future specialization.

“By matching us with public organizations, Ignite made it easier for us to reach potential customers,” says Rebecka. “Especially in the beginning, Ignite also became a kind of quality stamp. It can be difficult for an organization to take a chance on a company that does not yet have many references.”

The connection with Uppsala Municipality led to several projects and gave Parlametric valuable references. It also helped the company recognize the opportunities of focusing on public-sector organizations.

“It meant that we could start having customers as references and build from there. We realized that if we wanted to become really good at this, we needed to focus on a particular target group. We chose the public sector.”

But choosing a sector and understanding how to operate within it were two different things. Public procurement brought strict requirements and long sales cycles, while analyzing interactions between citizens and public-sector employees meant navigating extensive legal, privacy and security requirements.

“A municipality or region also has a responsibility towards its citizens. There have been many security checks and quality reviews to show that we meet all the requirements, and to help municipalities move forward with their risk and impact assessments.”

Meeting those requirements became part of learning what it takes to move from individual projects towards long-term customer relationships.

When One Collaboration Opens the Next Door

The Uppsala meeting was the beginning of a much broader network of connections. Of the 22 collaborations Parlametric has initiated through Ignite Nordic, 20 have been with public-sector organizations, involving 13 different organizations.

Parlametric’s work with public housing company Kopparstaden is one example of how those connections have created long-term value. The two were introduced through Ignite Nordic in 2021, and their collaboration has expanded from surveys and free-text analysis to AI-based analysis of customer service interactions.

“Kopparstaden was one of the first housing companies we started working with, and they have been a very important reference for us,” says Rebecka.

Together with collaborations such as those in Uppsala, the relationship helped Parlametric establish credibility and demonstrate the relevance of its offering to other public organizations.

“As a startup, it is easy to get stuck being seen as an exciting company with a cool service that someone just wants to test on a small part. For us, it has been important to understand how their entire organization works.”

For Rebecka, scalability is another important part of the equation.

“If you have established a collaboration with one municipality, there is an opportunity for three other municipalities to want to join in on the same thing.”

By connecting Parlametric with organizations facing similar challenges, Ignite has helped create opportunities for the company to build on its early collaborations rather than starting from scratch with every new customer.

Shaped by the Needs They Encountered

IThe relationships Parlametric developed also helped reveal new applications for its technology.

An important turning point came through a collaboration with Skövdebostäder. Parlametric had approached the company with its survey offering, but the customer raised another question: could Parlametric analyze customer interactions instead?

The original ambition to understand what people actually mean rather than reducing their experiences to a number remained, but the source of those insights had expanded from survey responses to conversations already taking place every day.

From Startup to Specialist

The evolution of Parlametric has also been reflected in the company’s rapid growth, supported by an expanding customer base and a clearer focus on the public sector.

“Things have moved very quickly. We have expanded, we are moving offices and hiring more people.”

But the next phase is not simply about becoming bigger. With a growing number of customers across the public sector, Parlametric wants to deepen its understanding of the specific industries and organizations it serves.

“Now that we have such a large collection of different industries and organizations within the public sector, we need to focus even more on becoming specialists within those industries, so that what we provide becomes even more useful to them.”

For Parlametric, the connections made through Ignite Nordic have helped shape more than its customer base. They have contributed to a clearer market focus, provided important references and opened doors to relationships that continue to create opportunities for growth.

What began with an introduction to Uppsala Municipality through Ignite Nordic in 2019 has become part of a much larger journey, showing how the right connections can help a startup find its place in the market.