During the spring of 2022, Transtema bought the Norwegian Tessta group. Tessta was founded in 1988 and today has approximately 160 employees and its head office in Oslo. Roger Selmersen is CEO of Transtema Connect, as the company is called today, a role he took on a few months before the company became part of Transtema.

Roger started working at Tessta as early as 1999 and has had a number of different roles. He started as a fitter and technician before moving on to become a team leader and project manager. For a few years, he was loaned out as a consultant to one of the company’s larger customers before returning to the role of project manager. When he was later asked to become CEO, it was natural for him to accept.

“It felt like it was the right move to step into the role of CEO. Since I have worked in the company for so long and held several different roles, I felt that I had the trust of the employees. I accepted the role just a few months before it became clear that Transtema would become the new owner. The change of ownership went much more smoothly than I first thought, and that is because the collaboration with Transtema has worked so well. Transtema’s management has been very good at including and following up.”

How would you describe your role?

My job is to have overall control over most things and hold together everything we do, but not go down to the level of detail. Among other things, I work to ensure that we stick to the strategy we have laid out, I follow up on financial targets and other targets linked to, for example, SBTi. I also have an overview of agreements and contact with customers. It’s important to me to be close with the company, so I make sure that we all get together regularly to discuss how things are working and solve things together.

What is the best thing about your job?

To feel that I am doing a good job for the company and that I am part of delivering quality to our customers. I am a goal-oriented person, so I am driven to achieve the goals we have set and achieve with the employees in the work. I also like being able to contribute to the employees enjoying their work and finding it fun.

Why did Tessta want to become part of Transtema?

The previous owners wanted to take Tessta to the next level and knew they needed another owner in order to grow. Actually, the company was not for sale when Transtema got in touch, but since Transtema is a telecoms company with long experience and the purpose of the purchase was to become the market leader in Norway, the owners felt that it was the right time to sell. We had a very good dialogue with Transtema’s management about our vision and how we were going to get there together.

What advantages did you see in becoming part of Transtema and Transtema’s brand?

We saw many advantages in becoming part of Transtema. We have always been a medium-sized niche player in telecoms in Norway. We wanted to continue growing and not fall behind because we were too small a player. With Transtema as the owner, we saw an opportunity to expand our offer since Transtema is a total supplier and is active in areas that we were not, such as monitoring, service and maintenance.

– We also saw early on the advantages of switching to Transtema’s brand and changing the name in Norway. The customers had already started talking about Transtema instead of Tessta, and then we saw no reason to wait.

What differences have you noticed since you became part of Transtema?

We have the opportunity to work with a longer perspective in mind now that we are part of a larger group. We can look ahead in a different way and create more long-term plans together. We notice that our customers see positively that we are now part of a larger group and they want to know what else we can assist with now that we are part of Transtema.

We also have services within the group that can be used at the same time. Our network monitoring centers (NOC) are a good example, instead of starting up a separate NOC in Norway, the existing NOC in Sweden can also be used for our customers.

The group management in Transtema is driven and gives us a lot of energy. It’s fun to work together and we can take advantage of group-wide resources and work that is carried out at group level.