A tech industry survey proves that agility leads to success

The fast growth is mainly generated by the game industry. Excluding game companies the turnover grew by seven percent, which is still a bit more than the average growth in the global software market. According to the survey the most successful companies in the software industry were the small and medium size enterprises. The publicly listed companies in the same field suffered a drop of a little over two percent in turnover.

The survey was carried out by study groups from the University of Jyväskylä and Aalto University in cooperation with The Federation of Finnish Technology Industries, The Finnish Software Entrepreneurs Association and The Finnish Information Processing Association, TIVIA ry. The survey was already the 18th of it’s kind.

The entrepreneur of Turku-based Anders Innovations Oy, Tomi Alapaattikoski says that a lot of the growth comes from online services still reaching new areas.

– Even the most traditional industries, like manufacturing, are moving from email and phone ordering towards automation.

Whereas many big tech companies have enough coding staff to create each customer their own unique products, Anders Innovations is focusing on ready-to-use products with the possibility for customization, says Alapaattikoski.

According to Alapaattikoski, product orientation requires a more entrepreneurial mindset from employees. He believes this leads to more innovative thinking and it is exactly what drives small companies to success.

Earlier Anders Innovations operated mainly in the Nordic market but has now built a comprehensive partner network in the United States.

In the U.S. market having an open source code is a prerequisite, says Alapaattikoski. Over there no one wants to take the risk of the only proficient service provider ending support for the product for any reason.

Experienced developers root for open source too.

– We hope for our competitors to implement our system. The more popular it gets, the better. Thanks to the open source code, anyone can further develop our product, which makes it more attractive.

Many companies have struggled with creating revenue from a business logic based on openness and sharing, but now even Microsoft has publicly discussed opening the source code of its Windows operating system.

– Open source will be dominant in the future. The chosen technology will be left out of focus, because the customer cares only about the fact that the product works.

Anders Innovations aims to challenge the current market leader in ecommerce platforms, Magento, with their own platform Shoop.

Alapaattikoski is not scared of the fact that Magento is owned by the ecommerce giant eBay.

– We know how to create the best ecommerce platform in the world.

Turun Sanomat Newspaper, 26.6.2015