ISLET­TER HIGH­LIGHT: Jarkko Mat­ti­la, San­sia Oy

THROUGH ISLET BINOC­U­LARS: JARKKO MAT­TI­LA, CEO

Found­ed in 2011, San­sia is a pub­licly owned ser­vice com­pa­ny owned by its cus­tomers: 96 pub­lic enti­ties across Fin­land. San­sia pro­vides its cus­tomers with pro­cure­ment and con­tract man­age­ment ser­vices, pas­sen­ger trans­port ser­vices and chan­nels for elec­tron­ic order­ing. Cus­tomers also receive sup­port to orga­nize their own pro­cure­ment activ­i­ties. San­sia is a non-prof­it lim­it­ed lia­bil­i­ty company.

Tell us a lit­tle bit about your­self and Sansia

I am the CEO at San­sia. I have a wife and five sons. In my free time I hunt with my 2‑year-old dog, a Finnish Spitz, and play all sorts of sports, like ice-hockey.

Sansia’s vision is to pro­vide ”Smooth every­day life, smooth pur­chas­es”. We want to be more to our cus­tomers than a pro­cure­ment com­pa­ny. Our orga­ni­za­tion has grown strong­ly in the past years. Our aim is to devel­op the ser­vice con­tent accord­ing to our cus­tomers and improve the role of joint procurement.

What are the keys to success?

The key to suc­cess is peo­ple. Find­ing tal­ent­ed peo­ple is ever more chal­leng­ing, so it is impor­tant to ensure that those exist­ing tal­ents are moti­vat­ed. You also need to build your ser­vices to bet­ter match the needs of your cus­tomers. For the future it is also essen­tial to man­age growth and devel­op enti­ties togeth­er with customers.

What kind of chal­lenges do you see in your industry? 

The chal­lenge is pub­lic sec­tor is to stay up to date, in the front lines of devel­op­ment. Our oper­at­ing envi­ron­ment is chal­lenged by resis­tance to change, ambi­gu­i­ty and inde­ci­sion about direc­tion. There is a great need to do things, but they don’t always get done with­in the desir­able sched­ule. There are big plans for opti­miz­ing pub­lic trans­port and pas­sen­ger trans­port to gain bet­ter ser­vices. This is an inter­est­ing field and hope­ful­ly there will be a lot of devel­op­ment in the future, enabled by technology.

What is the role of Sansia?

Cur­rent­ly our sit­u­a­tion in the oper­a­tions between munic­i­pal­i­ties is frag­ment­ed. Sansia’s role in the soci­ety is to clar­i­fy the joint vision by bring­ing cus­tomers togeth­er, across province and munic­i­pal­i­ty bor­ders, by com­bin­ing oper­a­tions with­in munic­i­pal­i­ties. Our five-year aim is to become a sig­nif­i­cant play­er in pas­sen­ger trans­port and a close part­ner to cus­tomers in pro­cure­ment and logis­tics in that industry.

What is the role of tech­nol­o­gy in your operations? 

Devel­op­ment of tech­nol­o­gy has a great effect on oper­a­tions man­age­ment, fore­cast­ing and real-time report­ing. Ear­li­er human exper­tise was essen­tial and knowl­edge was scat­tered, help by the peo­ple. Now man­ag­ing the vol­ume of knowl­edge is of great impor­tance, in order to man­age enti­ties. Through improved report­ing we want to offer our cus­tomers knowl­edge in its right form and in real time, so they can devel­op their pro­cure­ment should they wish to do so. We all need to adapt to the con­stant change of the oper­at­ing environment.

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

My mes­sage to cus­tomers is based on our vision: Smooth every­day life, smooth pur­chas­es. San­sia is more than a pro­cure­ment com­pa­ny. Although our cus­tomers have dif­fer­ent needs and start­ing points, pro­cure­ment units work bet­ter togeth­er. It is also more prof­itable to do joint busi­ness pro­cure­ment. As a spe­cial fea­ture our oper­a­tions are guid­ed by a law that is dif­fi­cult to apply and requires expertise.

What is the best part of your work?

The best part of my work is def­i­nite­ly work­ing with tal­ent­ed peo­ple and devel­op­ing togeth­er. My guide­line in my own lead­er­ship is to focus on moti­vat­ing and engag­ing com­pe­tent peo­ple in their roles. San­sia invests in coach­ing and train­ing. Con­tin­u­ous learn­ing togeth­er in the midst of growth is important.

How would you describe the part­ner­ship with Islet?

The part­ner­ship with Islet is a low-thresh­old part­ner­ship. As a busi­ness and a cus­tomer, we are the same size and our process­es fit togeth­er well. For us, Islet is a reli­able long-term part­ner that has recent­ly also gone through a refresh­ing rebranding.

Mot­to:

Smooth pro­cure­ment

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