Islet Cel­e­brates 25th anniversary

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.

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.

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.

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:

• 2022: SAP Out­stand­ing Per­for­mance Award in the Nordics and Baltics
• 2021: SAP Busi­ness ByDe­sign Part­ner of the Year in the Baltics and Nordics
• 2023: Microsoft Spe­cial­iza­tion for “Ana­lyt­ics on Microsoft Azure”
• 2022: SAP Con­cur Part­ner Por­tal “Top Part­ner 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.

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.

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.

🔎 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.

#Islet­Group #Islet­ters #IsletGroup25 #cel­e­bra­tion #anniver­sary #val­ues #rebrand­ing #data #ana­lyt­ics #SAP #SAPAri­ba #SAP­Con­cur #devel­op­ment #WWF #sus­tain­abil­i­ty #nature #Islet­Goe­sItämeri #diver­si­ty #inclu­sion #part­ner #longtermpart­ner #cul­ture #fresh­faces #diver­si­ty­in­tech #Cus­tomer­in­fo­cus