The fifth financial statements mean giving up the baby pants

Wistec’s fifth financial year ended on 29 February 2020, so we do not walk in a start-up company’s baby pants anymore. However, I still feel like a start-up, in the positive sense of the word.

During the past year, our team has grown again with both Finnish and non-Finnish assets, which has been a source of great enrichment for us. We still do everything with a passion, but humbly and by listening to customers.

Feedback from customers is the best thing there is

You can tell by many things that we have outgrown the start-up phase. The company’s internal responsibilities have found their path, and minor things do not cause any panic for us.

Any negative feedback from a customer is always a big deal for us. We immediately assemble the team members who are available, investigate the issue and react to the feedback as carefully and quickly as humanly possible. In my understanding, our customers appreciate this model of operation that is based on trust and joint development.

The company continues its profitable growth

Last financial year was a favourable period for us, and I am happy with our profitable growth. We surpassed our goals and the company’s net turnover increased to €1.93 million, or by 27% compared with the previous financial year. In addition, January 2020 was our best month ever in terms of turnover.

Simultaneously, our operating profit increased by more than 40%, and we have every chance to continue as a growth company in the current financial year. The results prove that we are on the right path in the implementation of our strategy.

Our strategy is TaaS

What exactly is our strategy? We could sum it up with the term “TaaS”, or Training as a Service.

For five years now, as the first company in Finland, we have offered trainings as an ongoing service, with a fixed annual contract. TaaS is flexible in every direction, and we aim to bring the service to the individual level even for large corporations.

Our contract customers have embraced the TaaS service model, because it guarantees uninterrupted personnel trainings, application support, and reporting service. We are pleased to note than more than 90% of our customers renew their contract for the next period.

TaaS brings almost 50% of our turnover, although we do still sell traditional, individual training days also.

Online work and online trainings continue their growth

The coronavirus has forced almost all companies to talk about telecommuting. Remote meetings and trainings, for example, have broken through many people’s daily lives.

We at Wistec have had an excellent range of different forms of remote training for many years. I hope even organisations that still believe that “our employees probably don’t like online trainings” will boldly join us and cheerfully encourage their employees to improve at their work.

Our online training solution called Wistec Online is a familiar environment for more than 50,000 Finnish employees. We constantly develop the service, update the course contents on a regular basis and create more content.

For instance, the “Teams in teaching” course module is our new addition for educational institutions, implemented in cooperation with Microsoft’s educational team. We have paid special attention to international operators by offering Office 365 courses in Wistec Online in as many as eight languages!

Exports to India and Europe

We were also active in the export market during the financial year that ended. Among other things, we established a subsidiary in India where we already have a few resellers. In addition, we have signed the first deals with major European operators.

Our international customers appreciate our constantly updated online trainings that are available in multiple languages and can be purchased in support of their O365 deployment projects. Our online learning environment that can be integrated with the customer’s own environment (Azure AD, Single Sign-On) is acclaimed for its ease of use and operational reliability; the service also provides HR management with individual reporting for monitoring and exporting to the organisation’s own HR system.

An equal operational environment is the foundation for everything

Our operation is based on professional employees who are committed to serving our customers. During the recent financial year, we increased our team with four dedicated professionals.

Our particular strength is profound technology competence combined with application that is easy to comprehend. We at Wistec believe in a world where value is created in an equal operational environment, with respect for colleagues and customers alike, and through efficient utilization of partnerships and ecosystems.

People of the world are living in exceptional times right now, and no one really knows the eventual impacts of the situation. We can manage our daily lives by following my father’s advice when I moved away from my parents’ home: “Let’s all do our own duties. The thing is, Juha, if everyone performs their own tasks, everything will be fine in the end.”

So, let’s take good care of one another. We are going to ride this out.