With nearly 3 000 employees, the Nordic twoday has seven offices in Finland, including one in Lappeenranta. In total, there are offices in five countries.

twoday was born in 2022, when 22 companies focusing on digitalisation consulting were spun off from Visma. Thus, Visma Consulting Oy, which had been operating in Lappeenranta, changed its name to twoday Oy as a result of the acquisition.

In Lappeenranta, twoday has its roots in OCTO3 Oy, founded in 2011, which grew from a start-up with a few employees to a software company with many tens of employees. In 2017, OCTO3 Oy was acquired by Visma. Lappeenranta twoday has a long history as a local company that is now part of a larger entity.

Ilkka Toivanen, Production Manager at twoday, says that of the 70 employees in the Lappeenranta office, around 50 joined the company before 2017.

- The Lappeenranta region has a good talent pool, Toivanen says.
- People here are very committed to their work and enjoy the area because of its nature and unhurried life.

Many of the employees have been found locally.
- And because we are open to growth, we are also very positive about finding more people.
Toivanen believes that people who have grown up in higher education, wherever they come from originally, are happy to stay in the region if there are jobs available. twoday's recipe for this is to work closely with the institutions.

- We are happy to take on trainees and graduates and we feel it's a win-win for both, he says.
- We can transfer our own skills to the employee, while they bring new ideas to the job and commit to the company. We have attracted a lot of good young people to work for us through this.

Toivanen is also happy to give lectures on twoday skills and the way it works in educational institutions.

The office is in Lappeenranta, the work is mobile

twoday is a full-service solution partner that helps its customers succeed in digital transformation through data-driven decision making, artificial intelligence solutions, customized software development, service design, digital services and business applications. In Finland, we have around 700 employees, all of whom are available for projects depending on the skills needed. Thus, the workplace may be in Lappeenranta, but the customer may be somewhere else.
- Our Lappeenranta teams have expertise in software development, user interface and service design development, and project management, Toivanen says.
- Nowadays, however, AI applications and solutions are becoming more common, and we are well prepared for its use.

Our customers include both companies and public organisations.

- For example, we have been involved in the development of the Lappeenranta sports facility application and the Lappeenranta buses application for public transport.

When necessary, the company's experts work very closely with the customer. It is not at all uncommon for a twoday employee to sit on the customer's premises - sometimes for long periods of time - when a project requires a lot of attention. This is common, for example, when large public administration systems are built on the company's platform. Often the system is also delivered on a turnkey basis, where it is fully customised to the customer's needs.

People first

twoday's simple-sounding recipe for efficiency is that if employees are happy, customers are happy.

- I know that 'people first' is a very often repeated phrase in organisations, says Toivanen.
- We really take it seriously, as this value is embedded in the whole Group strategy. It is implemented, among other things, through sensitive listening and trust in our employees.

This is also confirmed by Anu-Hannele Massinen, Technical Project Manager, who recently started working at twoday, who agrees with Toivanen.

- I not only wanted to develop in my job, but also to get closer to the customers, and this was taken into account in a great way when I joined the company, says Massinen.
- The working conditions, such as the tools and the environment, are in place and the experts' skills are trusted.

Massinen also likes the fact that twoday's communication is down-to-earth and open, and is done when it matters, not to maintain logo visibility.

- There is a kind of comfortable and confident feeling, we only promise what we can keep.

An ICT cluster is developing well in the region

The people-first attitude also helps twoday, for example in its cooperation with other ICT companies. Both Toivanen and Massinen have been involved in setting up an ICT cluster in the South Karelia area, which aims not only to increase cooperation between them, but also to attract more companies to the area.

- We strongly feel that cooperation gives a lot more than competition, says Massinen.
- Besides, there are many situations where a customer has such a large and complex project that one company may not be able to handle it, but it makes sense to work together, so that everyone can bring in their own specific expertise and capacity to the extent that they can at the time.

There are currently nine companies in the cluster and the "six-party" was celebrated together a couple of weeks ago. The informal meeting went off in good spirit and future cooperation is looked forward to.

- We are not afraid of competition and we are not jealous, we are more together, says Massinen.
- We believe that the better you know someone, the better you get to know yourself. The cluster will have an estimated 100 members from different companies and then we can make bigger offers together, among other things.

Collaboration and networking are, of course, standard practice among the interviewees.

- I have used the services of Wirma and Business Mill, among others, throughout my life and they have been very useful.

Read more: twoday.fi