Make digital development an integral part of your overall strategy

Digital development will grow exponentially in the coming years. This is really the last chance to digitalize your business in a way that will allow it to adapt to any future changes in an agile manner.

Jarkko Puumalainen and Lauri Järvenpää urge companies to put digital development into the core of the overall strategy.

Customer experience has become pivotal to all operations, irrespective of the industry. It has changed the name of the game also in B2B, where digitalization delivers measurable data and significant competitive advantage. Lamia, a Finnish digital growth partner, wants to direct clients into recalibrating their operations.

“In many cases, companies want to digitalize their business processes to match their existing operating models. Instead of that, companies should take a step back and look at why they are doing things the way they are doing them—from the standpoint of customer experience and processes. This is the moment that can provide a sustainable basis for future development. Machine learning and other improvements cannot be applied if the basics are not in order,” says Lauri Järvenpää, Co-Founder and Advisor, Technologies at Lamia.

According to Järvenpää, Lamia’s story originated from painful online store experiences, which Lamia was determined to make more customer friendly. Lamia’s range of services quickly expanded from online stores to more comprehensive digital development projects. Service design is at the core of all activities. Lamia’s clients include medium-sized and large Finnish companies, such as ST1, Yliopiston Apteekki/University Pharmacy, and Mehiläinen. The company is on a growth trajectory: during 2020, the year of the coronavirus, Lamia recruited 30 new talents and it continues to grow this year as well.

“Our growth indicates that we are doing things right.”

Guided by a common vision

Digitalization is not just a project, it’s an integral part of the overall strategy of a company. There’s a growing trend among big companies of buying from small and agile companies. Digitalization projects are divided into sub-projects and business-specific projects, which reduces risks and provides weekly data on progress. That’s why the whole organization needs to be committed to a common vision. Key people need to be adequately mandated to make decisions.

“Our task is to challenge our client into identifying genuine business needs. Instead of isolated projects, we devise a holistic progress plan. After careful service design, systems engineering is so much more gratifying. Our teams typically consist of a project manager, service designer, software developer and analytics and sales experts. We start by figuring out how all aspects of an organization can interact smoothly without creating any silos,” says Lamia’s COO Jarkko Puumalainen.

Agile transformation opportunities

Puumalainen, who has close to 20 years of IT experience, calls for a link between IT and business operations. In his opinion, intra-organizational silos are just one of the challenges of digital development.

“Old platforms are often rigid, and reforming them has not been easy. The agile transformation window is open now. I’m truly worried about companies not making the investment now. Soon, they will have nothing left to invest in. There are still many industries in Finland in need of urgent digital transformation. The whole country will suffer in the future if action is not taken soon.”

According to Lauri Järvenpää, COVID-19 has been a wake-up call for many.

“Things have always changed and they will continue to change. Technology develops and consumer behavior changes at an accelerating rate. The more flexible and better-built a digital platform is, the more adaptable to changes it will be in the future as well.”





Text: Jasmine Jussila / Presser Oy
Image: Robert Lindström / Presser Oy

The more flexible and better-built a digital platform is, the more adaptable to changes it will be in the future.