There is a productivity leap hiding in Finnish companies – here’s how to get started
A massive productivity leap might sound like utopia. However, doubling productivity by utilizing AI is already a completely realistic goal, claims Sami Karkkila from Sofigate.
I have recently had many discussions with next-generation business leaders, and I’ve been particularly delighted to see that they actively follow technological advancements and want to take an active role in shaping their company’s technology and AI strategies.
Leaders also understand well that technology cannot be treated as something separate from the core business. Business development increasingly requires a deeper understanding of the possibilities of technology, while technology projects, in turn, demand strong business expertise. Leaders also recognize the growing importance of new roles, such as business design, and the need for entirely new kinds of professionals.
This bodes well for Finnish companies’ capabilities to harness technology as the driver of productivity growth. We can already foresee that the most successful companies could even increase their productivity tenfold by disrupting entire markets by leveraging AI and creating entirely new business models within new kinds of business networks.
Not everyone will achieve this. However, every company can take steps in the right direction and ensure that it fully leverages the technology it already has, along with the AI capabilities embedded in it. While a tenfold increase in productivity may still be a utopia, doubling productivity is a great place to start.
Towards doubling productivity
This fall, Sofigate conducted a market study focusing on technology investments and their successes among large Finnish companies. The bad news in the recently published report is that although most technology projects are considered successful, only slightly more than one-fifth of these projects have resulted in significant productivity gains according to executives’ assesments.
There is good news too: Finnish companies have the potential for a massive productivity leap. The issue is not a lack or insufficiency of investments, but rather that the full benefits of existing technology have not yet been fully realized.
Avoid these four obstacles to get up to speed:
1. Setting the bar safely low
Too often, business development projects aim to achieve modest efficiency gains within the current state of operations, rather than striving to elevate the entire organization’s productivity to a new level. For example, AI is still too frequently seen merely as an assistant to expert work. In that role, it typically boosts the efficiency of expert tasks by around 20 percent.
However, it is possible to even double the productivity of a unit or an entire company: entire workflows and processes can already be entrusted to AI by leveraging AI agents enabled by business platforms. How does a more efficient customer service process that simultaneously boosts customer satisfaction sound?
2. Old roles, old silos
It is useless to dream of a productivity leap if technology is simply pasted on top of old processes and organizational charts. Real benefits from technology come only when different parts of the organization actively wor together, embracing new ways of working—and this requires active involvement from the company’s top leadership.
3. Superficial participation
Participation is often talked about, but genuine participation still often remains just talk. If people are viewed merely as passive recipients of change, it is unrealistic to expect organizational change to be lasting or new tools to be utilized to desired extent. Real change demands that the whole organization, including top leadership, contributes to the project with their expertise and commits to a new way of working.
4. Outsourced expertise
Change initiatives take up a lot of time, so delegating involvement to external consultants is often an attractive option for company leadership. However, this is also a mistake, as consultants do not build the company’s internal expertise. To deliver results, projects require continuous development and, consequently, ongoing investments in the company’s own change capabilities.
What else did business leaders responsible for change have to say? Download the free report with the results of the market survey: https://www.sofigate.com/tuottavuusloikka/
Author:
Sami Karkkila is the CEO of Sofigate. Sofigate has over 700 employees in the Nordic countries. In the Karkkila blog series the CEO considers sustainable growth leadership in a new, ever-changing reality.
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