Pioneer in Technology Industry – Marjariitta Wakkola
Since the beginning, Islet was a pioneer in diverse thinking and working in the tech world. Islet Group was founded in 1998 by Marjariitta Wakkola. Back then we were known as BPS Consulting – BPS stands for Business Processes and Solutions. BPS Consulting was one of the first local companies in Finland advising and implementing SAP solutions for Finnish companies. As a female founder Marjariitta was a pioneer in the technology industry. She started the company and built it into a solid business with satisfied customers and employees and established a good reputation in the market. In the following years, she was also one of the founders of BPS’ daughter companies in Hungary and the Baltic countries. Still today Islet has a strong team in Hungary supporting customers in many fields. Marjariitta led BPS for the first 17 years with her passion and dedication to customer excellence, helping organizations with SAP’s enterprise resource planning solutions. In October 2015, a family business succession took place and the second generation, Janina Luoto and Tommi Luoto, took the company over. Since then, Marjariitta has acted as a Member of the Board of Directors.
Marjariitta Wakkola
Second generation start – Tommi Luoto
Tommi Luoto started at Islet in 2008 and has since then worked closely with technology and different architectures. Nowadays, as a CTO, he leads the technological vision and strategic partnerships on our island. He deep dives into technological oceanic ecosystems while scouting new horizons, with our customers. On the island, Tommi is known for his sparkling humor, big heart, and straightforwardness. A major milestone was reached at Islet in October 2015, when the family business succession took place. The 17-year heritage with great customers, projects and amazing people was a firm bedrock to start building the future on. The first target was to pivot the company by investing in sales, our people and their competences, service & delivery models as well as by streamlining internal processes. The objective was to do a cloud transformation and lead the company to a sustainably profitable path by growing five times bigger in five years. Janina Luoto was appointed as CEO and Tommi Luoto as CTO.
Succession: Marjariitta Wakkola, Janina Luoto and Tommi Luoto
Tommi Luoto
From mother to daughter – Janina Luoto
Janina Luoto, Islet’s respected leader, is made of reliability, vision, interaction skills, professionality and a big heart. She has acquired her experience from all over the world – shores of the North Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. The most important asset to her has always been the people and their well-being. In 2015, Janina started as a Chief Operating Officer and Owner at Islet and in 2017 as Chief Executive Officer, following her mother in this role. After stepping into the CEO’s role, she highlighted three focus areas as the cornerstones of future success: our own people, our current customers and sustainable growth. These are still today the bedrock of everything Islet does. We thrive to be a long-term strategic partner for our customers, to understand their business and to work together in close collaboration to achieve their targets. Islet Group also started to recruit new Isletters to support the growth, to expand into new industries and to work with new cloud-based solutions and platforms, like Microsoft Azure, S/4HANA, SAP Business ByDesign and SAP Business Technology Platform. Watch the video published right after Janina Luoto was appointed as the company’s CEO in 2017 here (in Finnish).
BPS is now Islet
In 2018, BPS Consulting celebrated its 20-year anniversary. At the anniversary gala, a new brand and name were launched. BPS Consulting became Islet Group. The newly revealed brand was met with excitement by the customers, Isletters and partners.
Listen to the video of one of our dear Isletters, Satu Laisi, who led the Service business here (in Finnish).
🔎Did you know that the name Islet means a small rocky island in the middle of the sea, our company’s bedrock. There is also a link between the name of the company and the last name of this family business’ 2nd generation: Luoto.
Customer focus
Islet Group has worked with over 270 customer organizations from various industries in the past 25 years. We strive to transform our customers’ business, whether they are looking for reliable real-time data, efficiency, better user experience, centralized solutions or perhaps a jump to the cloud – we handle all conditions. Our customer satisfaction is exceptionally high, 4.4/5. We listen to our customers and support them in sustainable growth. Also, our key strategic partners, SAP and Microsoft, have awarded Islet several times for our long-term partnership. Did you know that Islet has been awarded by SAP several years in a row?
- 2022: Partner of the Year in Finland, in “SAP Rising Star” category
- 2020: Partner of the Year in Finland
- 2019: Partner of the Year in Finland
And we have also been recognized for:
SAP Rising Star Award
Partner of the Year 2021
Microsoft Partner of the Year
SAP Business ByDesign Award
High-quality nearshore team in Hungary
In 2000, Islet Group Kft was established in Hungary as a daughter company to Islet Group in Finland to provide high-quality, scalable services to our customers globally. The seamless remote cooperation has worked well, and our customers regularly complement the agile services and excellence of the support provided by our team in Budapest, Hungary.
“Our Isletter team in Hungary provides personalized, high-quality services to Islet’s customers globally. I am proud that we have such a highly skilled and experienced team that collaborates smoothly with customers and comes up with innovative solutions to meet their business requirements. We have developed great long-term partnerships with our customers by contributing to their sustainable development and growth.“
Expanding to new business areas and opening new offices
In 2020, Islet expanded its service portfolio to Data and analytics offering, and became Microsoft Gold partner. Janne Anttila was hired as the Chief Business Officer to lead the Data & Analytics business. The Data and Analytics business area has since been growing rapidly. In 2021, Islet invested in digitalizing sourcing and procurement, spend management and supplier collaboration, and became the first local SAP Ariba partner in Finland. Also in the same year, a new office in Oulu was opened to serve customers regionally and to find new talent to join Islet. Soon after that, in 2022, Islet also became a SAP Concur partner, thus expanding the portfolio to also deliver SAP Concur solutions: Concur Expense, Concur Invoice and Concur Travel. Jenni Lonka started as the Chief Business Officer in Sourcing and Spend Management business area. Later in the same year Islet opened a new Joensuu office, our third office in Finland.
Janne Anttila, CBO, Data & Analytics
Jenni Lonka, CBO, Sourcing & Spend Management
Islet Oulu Office
Islet Joensuu Office
Values – Commitment to Nature
We are committed to development that meets the present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. We strive to support our customers in their sustainability journey by making a positive environmental, social and governance impact in every single project and assignment we deliver. Also, we are committed to becoming carbon neutral this year when we celebrate Islet’s 25-year anniversary. We have been supporting important causes like the Baltic Sea protection by organizing a challenge called #IsletGoesItämeri for five years. As part of the challenge, Isletters and other stakeholders walk, run or cycle collecting kilometers that determine the amount of euros donated to WWF for their work to protect the Baltic Sea. Over the years Islet Group together with its stakeholders has collected over 5000 euros for the good cause. You can also participate by donating here. Moreover, we have boosted awareness of the Baltic Sea’s state by making an interview series with WWF Finland. Watch the videos here.
Values – Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
We commit to our shared values of respecting each other, customer orientation, innovativeness and sustainability. Our island has a strong bedrock. That is our know-how, built up over the years. We have learned to survive, to renew and to change direction whenever necessary. We have learned to listen for signs in the air and to look through binoculars at the horizon. We have walked together through calm and storm. We have learned to listen. Our personalities and joy are allowed to shine through. At Islet everyone can be themselves. One of our diversity goals is to “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”. However, as we know, diversity is a lot more than a gender question and therefore we have targets equally for nationality-based diversity, “Fresh Faces” ratio (new graduates and career changers) and for age diversity, for example. We want to monitor our progress closely and communicate it transparently – especially since we still lack women in technology industry globally and in Finland for example nationality-based diversity is relatively low in general. Equality, diversity and inclusion are at core when we build teams at Islet.
“At Islet, we are striving to make the world a better place with the latest technologies. People are at the core of everything we do. By investing in creating diverse and inclusive teams we can ensure that the teams prosper and we continue to be the preferred long-term partner for our customers. We don’t just speak kindly – our values are actions.“
🔎 Did you know that at the moment*:
👩🏿 39% of all Isletters are women (target is between 40-60%)
👩🦳 57% of Islet’s Management team are women (40-60%)
👩🏽🦰 67% of Islet’s Board of directors are women (40-60%)
Numbers we also follow closely:
👩🎓 34% of Isletters are “Fresh Faces” meaning fresh graduates or career changers (target >25%)
🌏 19% international diversity (other than Finnish as a first language) (>25%)
*data from 2023
We have also teamed up with for example SAP (SAP Fresh Faces) and Mimmit Koodaa (Coding challenge with Mimmit Koodaa) to make our industry and teams more diverse.
Celebrating the first 25 years
As a conclusion to the 25th-anniversary year, we celebrated this important milestone on two occasions.
Celebration with Customer and Partners
We had a wonderful evening celebrating Islet’s 25th-year anniversary with our beloved customers and partners in December 2023. We looked at our journey together, highlighted important memories and milestones and set our eyes on the horizon to look forward to the next 25 years.
Check out also our LinkedIn post.
Celebration with Isletters #IsletGoesLapland
With Isletters, who form the bedrock of our island, we spent a memorable weekend in Levi, Lapland, filled with laughter, fun, appreciation, and a heartwarming anniversary gala night.
Special thanks to all our customers, partners and Isletters who have accompanied us on this journey. We are grateful for all the colourful memories created on our island over the past 25 years. We have already embarked on the next 25 years journey and looking forward to do it together with our customers and partners sustainably.
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