Leveraging AI to create greater customer value

Leveraging AI to create greater customer Value  

The AI era we have entered is reshaping companies, industries, and our society. Over the past few years, new AI solutions have been widely and rapidly rolled out and have become one of the hottest topics of our time. This is also the case at Nolato, where a structured AI adoption strategy was initiated 2025, leading to the development of an in-house AI platform that is now being rolled out across the organization. The goal is to continuously enhance customer value and strengthen Nolato's position as a strategic partner.  

As was the case for most companies in 2022, the rise of AI quickly brought both opportunities and concerns. For Nolato, it became a broader question of how the company globally could best leverage these emerging technologies, leading to a comprehensive exploration of possible AI solutions. Eventually, after internal alignment, the team concluded that the best way to adopt AI across the organization would be to develop an in-house platform.   

 “From the very beginning, we took a cautious and deliberate approach to AI. Rather than rushing into widespread adoption, we consciously evaluated the potential use cases, business value, and risks to determine how AI could best support employees and operations,” says Basil Strässle, AI Transformation Manager at Nolato.  

Development and Rollout of the NOA Platform  

Together with an external IT partner, Nolato developed its internal AI platform, NOA (Nolato Operational Assistant), which is built and hosted within Nolato’s own secure cloud infrastructure and powered by Large Language Models (LLM). NOA is designed to be much more than a chatbot. It serves as a secure, flexible, and scalable platform for a variety of AI applications, data handling, and integrations with other internal systems. 

The platform’s functionality and capabilities are continuously expanded, refined and adapted to support teams and functions across Nolato, including administration, sales, production and operations, and research & development. Its capabilities range from document analysis and research to more advanced use cases, such as AI assisted maintenance and production-related insights. 
  

To ensure data quality, security and relevance, integrations with other Nolato systems have been introduced gradually and selectively, with data sources and documents added in a controlled and structured manner. In the same way, the implementation and rollout of NOA have been a gradual process across Nolato sites, focused on user adaptation and structured onboarding sessions. The platform went live in March 2026, followed by targeted onboarding sessions across departments, with the aim of ensuring effective usage and adoption. 

 “We are very pleased with the positive reception NOA has received. Employees have been appreciative of the platform and actively suggested new features and data sources. This engagement is very encouraging as it fosters co-creation with our team, which continuously works on enhancing the NOA capabilities,” explains Basil Strässle.  

Turning AI Potential into Business Value 

As a flexible platform, NOA evolves with the organization’s needs and supports both everyday efficiency as well as more specialized business applications. Consequently, its value extends beyond productivity gains, creating new opportunities for innovation across the Group. In terms of efficiency, NOA supports information analysis, procurement guideline navigation, market research, and business intelligence. At the same time, the platform can also enable innovation, for instance, within material development by leveraging the company’s database of historical technical documents to accelerate innovation of new materials. Furthermore, NOA has the potential to support sustainability by enabling better forecasting of material needs, reducing waste, and optimizing energy consumption in manufacturing through improved production scheduling and maintenance.  

 “While AI supports efficiency across a wide range of functions, it also drives innovation and helps advance our services and offerings. As we continue to develop NOA, we ultimately aim to create greater customer value by optimizing operations, reducing waste, and enabling better and more tailored solutions,” adds Basil Strässle. 

In this way, NOA is becoming an increasingly important tool not only for productivity, but also for long-term customer value and future development at Nolato.