BTS Guided Implementation / BT Operating model

Matti Vesala

I work as a Business Executive overseeing services that support customers in their digital business development. This is also my main focus in the Business Technology Academy.

My greatest passion is emotional and innovative purpose driven leadership that aims at making people feel happy, creative and excited – especially in business development. I love to step up and lead value networks that reach beyond known organizational structures to create value yet unseen! I’m passionate about “beta”, constantly encouraging people to discover new business potential by sharing, exploring and collaborating in the earliest stage.

I have a track record of over 15 years in leading business development and delivery of global IT services. Over the years, I’ve witnessed the evolution of the core IT and the revolution of digitalization especially in the telecom, media and manufacturing industries. I’m passionate to find out how future digitalization, AI and robotics will be managed and how we transform our leadership to maximize the benefits of emerging business technology.

I’m also passionate about cooking, and the same mindset can easily be applied to IT development as well: I imagine myself exploring new culinary adventures for customers by trusting simple high-quality ingredients but keeping a curious mindset constantly testing how to discover new ways to prepare them.

Sami Laurinantti

My passion during my career has always been around understanding the Customer, Business and Individual needs and trying to simplify the deliverables and message to match the actual requirements. Living in a complex world simplification is often a time consuming process. I have been able to hone these skills having worked in diverse roles and global multicultural environments and organisations. Prior to joining Sofigate in 2015 I have worked 15+ years in Account Management leading Customer Teams as well as Business Development positions primarily in the Telecoms industry on the operator side as well as equipment vendor side.

For the past four years at Sofigate I have been focusing on Service Management and SIAM Customer assignments, leading our Service Integration Practice team as well as concept development. I am also a Head Coach at the Sofigate Academy coaching the best practices of Service Management as well as running DevOps simulations. I have experience in implementing and leading a Service Integration Function (SMO) at a Customer environment as well as coaching Customers to increase the maturity of their SIAM practice in multivendor environments.

The most rewarding aspect of coaching is interacting and sparring with the students. Applying theory into practice can vary depending on the unique environment and the challenge is to understand those individual requirements. Coaching is also a learning experience for myself as we discuss different scenarios and specific organisational challenges of the students during the training days.

Life work balance is important and outside work I spend time with my family and friends. I like to stay fit and enjoy exercising and playing different sports such as golf, basketball and tennis. Traveling and seeing the world has always been important for our family.

Ari Nuutinen

My mission is to help customers to develop and improve their business with IT. I have a strongly business-oriented way of thinking combined with solid technical background. I’m inspired by challenges and finding creative, new ways of getting things done. Business technology, strategy and transformation are my areas of expertise. I have worked with more than 50 companies ranging from small growth companies to large corporations in various industries.

Coaching means continuous learning and professional development for myself me as well. I like to share my experiences and learn from others. I am motivated in simplifying complex issues, and I like to use visualization as a tool for communication.

In my free time I like to try out everything new and exciting. One of my long-time hobbies is martial arts. For me, it is a versatile combination of real-life agility, brain-teasing problem solving, overall physical fitness etc. Life-long learning at its best.

Elena Van Leemput

I like my work best when I can motivate and help other people. I constantly strive for excellence in everything I do and I’m open to different ideas that challenge my views.  I believe in constant change which drives my innovative mindset. My background is both in technology and business with more than 15 years’ experience ranging from demand, development to service management.  I enjoy taking initiative and carry out new ventures.

I try to keep things simple and bring my skills when I coach and facilitate to inspire people and help them innovate. I’m passionate about all forms of facilitation and coaching be it face-to-face or virtual facilitation. I also enjoy creating different e-learning training, holding innovation workshops and design thinking hackathons.

I also find it very important to nurture my creative side along the way (visual arts: photography, sketching, videography and all areas of design) through both my work and hobbies – which I’m happy to say I get to do often enough.  

Jari Tietäväinen

As a seasoned enterprise architect with long and versatile experience my passion is to help business and IT work together and achieve even the most challenging goals. I already have 30+ years of IT experience, including 20 years’ experience of Enterprise Architecture. Financial Services is my strongest industry but over the years I have worked with organizations in vast majority of other industries as well.

I also work as consultant as well as a trainer. Therefore, as a trainer, I always want to share my wide hands-on experience and knowledge and focus on essential. I often hear the words “I have never heard anyone explain Enterprise Architecture as clearly as you just did” which is something that really motivates me.

Being able to see far enough and understand the big picture are key requirements for successful Enterprise Architecture. This is something I like to do in my leisure time also. Astronomy is one of my favorite hobbies. Wondering the miracles of the Universe with my two astronomical telescopes helps me charging my batteries for new challenges.

Sakari Hyppänen

My specialties in IT Management are Vendor Management and Service Integration (SIAM). My 8 years in consulting client industries have included e.g. manufacturing, telecom, pharmaceutical and food. My assignments revolve around SIAM Model design, Vendor Management model design and training, IT Operating Model design, to mention a few. Highlights in my career are the times when we (there is always a team) have been able to exceed customer expectations or turn around a challenging situation.

The most rewarding thing about coaching for me is being able to spark lively discussions among the participants by challenging them to think, and then to both see the group get new ideas and to learn new things myself.

I am passionate about the idea of holistic wellbeing, as described in Aki Hintsa’s book The Core – Better Life, Better Performance. Adopting his framework has enabled me to divide my time and effort between the various areas of life and lead a more balanced and fulfilling life. One of the key lessons is adopting the 80/20 rule in most things (diet, exercise etc.) and thus avoiding stressful perfectionism.

Liisa Korkiakoski

I’m a computer scientist who has been working in different areas of business & IT for more than 20 years. Starting as a Programmer and then continuing to work in several different areas and in different roles within IT led me to be e.g. eCommerce-, eProcurement-, Integration specialist, and Project/Program Manager. Everything I did was around Digitalization.

Past five-plus years I’ve been working with the subjects of learning, training & coaching at Sofigate Academy. My work varies from 2 hours of interactive facilitation events to the creation of 2 years-long change programs and everything from between. The key in everything is to empower people to learn, to understand, and to make the change We at the Academy have a strong people-centric mindset. My job here is to create memorable learning experiences with an impact – and do it in a fun, inspirational way.

My latest passion is in Positive Psychology – how can we have a happy, flourishing life. As a Positive Psychology Practitioner, I’m bringing new coaching themes to our trainings including areas such as self-determination theory in practice, supporting our inner motivation, growing mindset, self-determined organisations and teams & why and how to use your strengths.

Today I still have the strong computer scientist in me, but nowadays I’ll describe myself as a digitalization, change and training leader with a twist of a happiness scientist.

Mikko Saari

I am leading and developing the Sourcing and Supplier Management practice at Sofigate. During my time at Sofigate I have successfully executed 50+ projects, most of them related to sourcing management or supplier management.

My passion is to always seek for the best possible outcome and see through that the benefits are realized. I am intrigued by the most challenging scenarios, where joint efforts are necessary and required from the whole ecosystem, including our team, customer’s team and suppliers’ best experts, to develop and deliver the best possible outcome for the customer.

The most rewarding thing about coaching for me is to hear that the learnings have been taken into action in the daily work and see that those actions are realized as a true benefit or a positive change for the whole organization.

In my free time, I spend most of my time on the golf course eagerly trying to hit the hole-in-one.

Timo Savolainen

My passion is Agile Leadership, Digital Transformation and Business Development. I authored the first book in Finnish on the topic of Leading Digital Transformation including 10 success stories e.g. Finnair, Wärtsilä, Finnish Tax Administration and Reima.

Coaching and facilitating both online and face-to-face are the keys to drive digital transformation both on team and C-level.

I am a left-handed visual thinker and that’s why I truly enjoy using Design Thinking and Service Design methods to create outstanding product and services both in B2B and B2C.