With tech, we can save the world

An arti­cle by SAP in the Novem­ber issue of “The Inside Track” e‑zine for part­ners, read the orig­i­nal here.

Jan­i­na Luo­to is the CEO and own­er of Finnish SAP gold-part­ner Islet Group. A fam­i­ly-owned — and run — busi­ness, Islet has a strong sense of cul­ture and a pro­found dri­ve to deliv­er tech for good. Ear­li­er in 2020 Jan­i­na was also a final­ist in the Nordic Women in Tech awards, in the Dig­i­tal Leader category.

Islet has a real­ly clear goal: to imple­ment busi­ness-lead­ing, cloud-first SAP tech­nol­o­gy that makes a dif­fer­ence to cus­tomers and to the plan­et. The 22-year-old com­pa­ny, with offices in Fin­land and Hun­gary, has under­gone a major trans­for­ma­tion enabling it to deliv­er solu­tions fast for its client-base and grow its team of ‘Islet­ters’ even in the most chal­leng­ing of cli­mates. “We’ve always been pio­neer­ing in our diverse think­ing and work­ing in the world of tech,” explains Jan­i­na. “We were found­ed 22 years ago by my moth­er, which was very unusu­al in IT at that time, and since then we have active­ly pro­mot­ed equal oppor­tu­ni­ties in our industry.”

Indeed, 50% of the work­force and man­age­ment team are women and Islet coop­er­ates reg­u­lar­ly with organ­i­sa­tions such as the Mim­mit Koodaa (women code) move­ment, which aims to inspire women to learn to code and steer their career paths towards oppor­tu­ni­ties in tech. This for­ward-look­ing, pio­neer­ing spir­it was the dri­ving force behind Islet’s trans­for­ma­tion into a sus­tain­ably grow­ing cloud first business.

Says Jan­i­na: “Over the past five years we’ve under­gone a huge change, not just in terms of how we look and feel as a busi­ness but in terms of becom­ing tru­ly a dif­fer­ent kind of play­er in the mar­ket. We have an agile method­ol­o­gy to deliv­er, for exam­ple, full scale S/4HANA Cloud, SAP Busi­ness ByDe­sign and Ari­ba solu­tions total­ly online. It takes us three months on aver­age to close opportunities.”

The results of putting cus­tomers and employ­ees first and mov­ing towards a cloud first busi­ness mod­el are clear to see: last year Islet grew by 64% and, even with the arrival of a pan­dem­ic, 2020 will see growth con­tin­ue by a fur­ther 30%. “Oper­at­ing in the cloud space means we have recur­ring rev­enue secured for the next three to five years. It’s very pos­i­tive and makes it eas­i­er to forecast.”

Recent­ly becom­ing one of the first SAP Ari­ba part­ners in Fin­land, Islet is look­ing for an even stronger foot­print on the cloud busi­ness. The com­pa­ny also reg­u­lar­ly col­lab­o­rates with oth­er part­ners to deliv­er inno­v­a­tive projects. But, as Jan­i­na says, the pas­sion that lies behind the com­pa­ny is the endeav­our to change the world for the bet­ter by har­ness­ing the best of technology.

The com­pa­ny itself takes the long-term view on sus­tain­abil­i­ty, encour­ag­ing its team to dri­ve for­ward a series of projects includ­ing, for exam­ple, the Baltic Sea pro­tec­tion pro­gramme #ISLET­Goe­sItämeri which chal­lenged peo­ple to run, bike or walk and raise mon­ey for every kilo­me­tre cov­ered, and the Women Code (#mim­mitkoodaa) move­ment, the aim of which is to increase equal­i­ty in the Finnish soft­ware indus­try by pro­vid­ing acces­si­ble, free-of-charge, work­shops for women inter­est­ed in cod­ing but with no pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence. Jan­i­na is also a Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Steer­ing Com­mit­tee Mem­ber at the Finnish Fam­i­ly Busi­ness Asso­ci­a­tion: engag­ing and empow­er­ing fam­i­ly busi­ness­es towards a more sus­tain­able future.

“Despite the unfor­tu­nate world sit­u­a­tion at the moment, we see that the impact of dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and the amount of soft­ware dri­ven busi­ness, also with­in tra­di­tion­al indus­tries, will grow remark­ably in the com­ing years. Our goal is to triple our busi­ness in five years, by invest­ing in our peo­ple, cus­tomers and sustainability.”

#Islet­Group #SAP #SAP­part­ner #SAP­In­sid­e­Track #intro­duc­tion