From the Managing Director

Towards change

The year 2018 was a busy one for Hansel. We broke the sales records in all of our services, and also prepared for the merger with KL-Kuntahankinnat. This required plenty of flexibility from all the employees, which is why I’m very pleased to hear that the job satisfaction survey rating improved from the previous year regardless of the challenging year.

Over the course of the spring, our owner, the Ministry of Finance, discussed the establishment of a joint procurement unit for the entire public sector with the owner of KL-Kuntahankinnat. This was considered wise for many reasons: procurement expertise could be better developed, experts would be available to a larger group of customers and larger volumes would guarantee more efficient procurement.

The preparation of the merger was very intensive during the latter half of the year. The merger of business operations and administration was planned by several integration teams and employees met each other to discuss the change. I participated in several events all around the country to meet our future customers. However, right before the holiday season, we came to the conclusion that we needed more time for the preparations, which is why the merger was postponed to the autumn of 2019.

One concrete action to enable the merger was changing our offices in the main post office building in Helsinki to a multifunctional office space to make room for the new Hansel employees. The renewed, modern facilities have been a positive surprise, and they have supported the motivation of the Hansel employees.

We are nearing net sales of €900 million per year in joint procurement, which is great from the perspective of saving government funds. We are continuously developing our agreements and contracts to better serve our customers’ needs. A novelty in joint procurement in 2018 was the introduction of dynamic purchasing systems. They are especially well suited for industries in which changes are quick and flexibility is required.

The year was also very lively for our expert services. We increased the volume of our praised tendering projects from the previous year, both in terms of the number of projects and the value of the projects. Development services established their place in our service portfolio and we launched a new product, procurement as a service, for smaller customer organisations. It has been a pleasure to note how high the demand for our special expertise is.

We had plenty of work in 2018, which is also reflected in this annual report. The report also includes a comprehensive review of our work on responsibility. As a large procurement unit, we vigorously promote responsibility. We will continue our work and its development this year, and start to serve municipalities at the end of the year.

Anssi Pihkala
Managing Director