ISLET­TER HIGH­LIGHT: Min­na Kor­pela, Palkeet

THROUGH ISLET BINOC­U­LARS: MIN­NA KOR­PELA, DEVEL­OP­MENT MAN­AG­ER, PALKEET

Tell us a lit­tle about your­self and what kind of orga­ni­za­tion do you work and what is your role there?

I live with my fam­i­ly in Hämeen­lin­na. My free time is spent with fam­i­ly and hob­bies for chil­dren (6, 13 and 15-year-old). I spend most of my time exer­cis­ing either on jog­ging tracks or in the gym.

The State Trea­sury and Human Resources Ser­vice Cen­ter (Pal­keet) is a sig­nif­i­cant group ser­vice provider in the Min­istry of Finance’s admin­is­tra­tion. Our goal is to pro­mote the effi­cien­cy of pub­lic admin­is­tra­tion by pro­vid­ing high-qual­i­ty and cost-effec­tive finan­cial and human resources sup­port and expert ser­vices. We pro­vide finan­cial and HR ser­vices to gov­ern­ment agen­cies, insti­tu­tions and funds, as well as to approx­i­mate­ly 73,000 indi­vid­ual employ­ees with approx­i­mate­ly 660 professionals.

My role is rel­a­tive­ly new as my cur­rent role start­ed at the begin­ning of this year. My area of​respon­si­bil­i­ty is the devel­op­ment of finan­cial man­age­ment based on com­mon guide­lines of the state admin­is­tra­tion. Finan­cial and human resource man­age­ment is devel­op­ing fast and the industry’s needs are con­stant­ly chang­ing. By 2025, accord­ing to the Pal­keet and indus­try, automa­tion and robot­ics have large­ly replaced basic man­u­al tasks. In the future, the need for expert tasks will be empha­sized. A change in the nature of the work has already begun. In the future, exec­u­tive automa­tion and robot­ics will be increas­ing­ly respon­si­ble for exec­u­tive lev­el work. Also, ana­lyt­ics and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence are uti­lized in work tasks. From a ser­vice cen­ter per­spec­tive, future work empha­sizes analy­sis, sce­nario build­ing, rec­om­men­da­tions for action, and sup­port for prac­ti­cal deci­sion mak­ing. We are cur­rent­ly reflect­ing on how to achieve cer­tain lev­els of automa­tion and how to ensure the skills of our own staff as work changes sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the indus­try. We have also bench­marked com­pa­nies, for exam­ple, what future job roles would look like.

To which direc­tion is your field developing?

Automa­tion and job changes are on the board agen­da. The future change is also about real-time eco­nom­ics, mean­ing that all infor­ma­tion must be achieved in as real time as pos­si­ble. More and more are being intro­duced for exam­ple online pay­ments and e‑receipts. We, the state, are pio­neers in e‑invoicing and the goal is that by the end of 2019, 95 % of the invoic­es we receive from the state will be e‑invoices. In gov­ern­ment bills, the tar­get is 36 %.

Nowa­days, there is the agili­ty of change, which means that in the future it will not be nec­es­sary to spend time on IT-projects 5 – 10 years, they must be faster. The need for leg­isla­tive change also affects our indus­try and this is high­light­ed in my own work. Often the ques­tion is how to keep the leg­is­la­tion up to date with the change. Things can be done as well as before, even though they are now done with the help of automa­tion. For exam­ple, the automa­tion pro­vides bet­ter con­trol than just the human eye. I believe that cen­tral­iz­ing and automat­ing rou­tine activ­i­ties will give the var­i­ous par­ties bet­ter time to focus on their core tasks. As access to infor­ma­tion becomes auto­mat­ed and eas­i­er, so does the need for human com­pe­tence, as analy­sis is need­ed to sup­port deci­sion-mak­ing. From sys­tem ven­dors, we expect more to be done to improve the user expe­ri­ence, which means that the end user per­spec­tive is bet­ter con­sid­ered when devel­op­ing the system.

What is your organization’s key mes­sage to its stake­hold­ers and customers?

Our cus­tomer promise is: Part­ner at your service.
We empha­size our will­ing­ness and abil­i­ty to enhance the effi­cien­cy of pub­lic admin­is­tra­tion through cost-effec­tive and high-qual­i­ty dig­i­tal ser­vices. We under­stand that we need to work close­ly with var­i­ous stake­hold­ers. We have con­scious­ly start­ed to change the way we do things, so that work­ing togeth­er and shar­ing knowl­edge is empha­sized. For exam­ple, we have been among the first in our indus­try to imple­ment soft­ware robot­ics to our process­es. We have not been wait­ing for what the world will bring, but we are work­ing active­ly to devel­op val­ue for our cus­tomers through busi­ness development.

How does your orga­ni­za­tion retain top tal­ents and what makes your orga­ni­za­tion a great place to work?

By pro­vid­ing inspir­ing and respon­si­ble work, that is, enough chal­lenges and future pos­si­bil­i­ties. We strive to ensure the com­pe­tence of our per­son­nel so we can meet the future needs. We enable dif­fer­ent knowl­edge and learn­ing paths, for exam­ple, we have trained peo­ple inside the house to take on new job roles. This way we want to make sure that we have enough in-house expertise.

What is the best part of your work?

Being able to see and expe­ri­ence the change in the indus­try and to be able to influ­ence the direc­tion of change by mov­ing things for­ward. I like being at the fore­front of devel­op­ment to push things for­ward. The best thing is to work close­ly with dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers, it being a cus­tomer or anoth­er stake­hold­er. Some­times, for exam­ple, the chal­lenge may be to see an over­lap in action, with the same type of devel­op­ment issues being brought togeth­er with stake­hold­ers that could have been com­bined and solved togeth­er. We have a very good team spir­it, and even if we work hard, we usu­al­ly keep our humor up to speed.

How would you describe the part­ner­ship with ISLET?

We have been very pleased with the coop­er­a­tion. The exper­tise we received from ISLET was good and exceed­ed our expec­ta­tions. We received a good and com­pre­hen­sive pre-study on the joint project and clear action pro­pos­als for the future. It was impor­tant to have a con­crete view of how a pos­si­ble change would be reflect­ed in our oper­a­tions and envi­ron­ment. The S/4HANA Finan­cial pre-study project helped us to see the future needs for change. ISLET was able to give a reli­able pic­ture of this. The project left all the experts and par­tic­i­pants in good spir­its, which is often rare in projects of this scale. There was a feel­ing that coop­er­a­tion with ISLET will continue.

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