Why we created the ecosystem of service companies
09 | 2022 Olli Laine, Co-founder & CEO
From its very first steps, Kipinä was involved in creating a shared ecosystem with a number of companies sharing the same values. Many people have asked us about the background and ideas behind our ecosystem. Timo Korander of Luoto Company wrote well about our common ideas and answered the question "why an ecosystem?". Read Timo's blog below.
Olli Laine
Why we created the ecosystem of service companies
There has been a lot of talk about ecosystems in the Finnish IT scene lately. We are not content to just talk, we have created one. We believe in an ecosystem structure, the advantage of which boils down to two things.
Experts want to work in a small company.
Customers want to buy services from a trustworthy provider in a holistic way.
Experts want to know their colleagues
Competition for experienced professionals is fierce, and the demands made on service companies by experts are growing all the time. Many of the best people want to be entrepreneurs, to have a say in their workplace and to benefit from the success of the company. But they also want to work in a human-sized company where their colleagues and their strengths are known.
Since the beginning of the Luoto Company, we have believed in humanity and wanted to build a working life where the principle of fairness brings fairer growth for both our customers and our shareholders. The same core value remains at the heart of our business and we believe in it for the future. Our unique co-ownership structure has proven over the years that fairness brings experienced professionals together as a true team, outperforming individual performance in an increasingly globalised competitive environment.
Our collective ecosystem has grown strongly to already 130 experienced professionals (average years of experience over 15). This growth confirms our belief that we are on the right track. The best people in the industry want to work in small companies and at the same time learn from their experienced colleagues.
Customers do not have time to search for an endless number of partners
In the product business, ecosystem structures have long proven their worth. An example of this is car manufacturing, where components produced by different actors come together to form a functioning end product. By operating as an ecosystem, smaller, fast and tightly focused players are also able to generate new innovations quickly. We believe that the whole service company market is also moving towards an ecosystem structure.
For service companies, and ecosystems in particular, it is important to provide a customer experience that is superior to that of their traditional competitors. When a service vendor knows the person they are working with, they are sure to find the best person for the job. If expertise is sought from hundreds of people, there is a greater risk of sloppy work.
However, customers do not want to have to find a different partner for every issue and complicate their own work. It is therefore important to be able to serve customers as an ecosystem. Together, the customer experience and offering can be developed to better serve customers.
To succeed, a company needs to thrive in both the customer and specialist markets. The combination of a small scale and an ecosystem of shared values enables new breakthroughs to emerge.
Together with Luoto Company, Vuolu, Kipinä Software, NorthCode and Asteroid, we form an ecosystem of over 130 experienced professionals serving our customers. As a foundation and a unifying factor of the ecosystem, we share the same value base and ownership model.
Timo Korander, Luoto Company