Growing interest in digitalisation
Metsä Fibre’s customers are interested in digital services and the benefits they generate, but they also want buyers and sellers to maintain continuous contact.
SANNA LAAKKONEN
negotiate on acquisitions, and interaction with the seller must also remain active in other ways,” Salmenkivi says. When asked about new digital services, customers fo- cused on the benefits they offered. Customers are happy to adopt new services, as long as they add value to their own business operations. “Benefits can take many forms – for example, they can save time or bring direct cost savings. Customers can get information about products in stock or unpaid invoices more quickly thanks to more efficient data transfer, or a service can facilitate supply chain management so that the customer can better manage ordering and save on inventory costs,” Salmenkivi says. Supply chain management also plays a key role. Ac- cording to Salmenkivi, customers appreciate Metsä Fi- bre’s ability to show the origin of raw materials through- out the supply chain. Customers also want to monitor the delivery time closely. “Close monitoring of deliveries is a good example of how things that are familiar from consumer services are gradually being adopted on the B2B side. As technology develops, the requirements for services are the same in professional and private life. And customers feel that the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the development of new digital services.” •
“Our customer companies are at very different stages of digitalisation. Yet the topic is on everyone’s agenda in one way or another,” says Metsä Fibre’s Sales Manager Katja Salmenkivi , who has interviewed customers of the company’s pulp operations. The interviews revealed that some customer companies readily use different services in their organisation’s sales and delivery interface, whereas others are still thinking about what the potential of digitalisation could be. “The pulp and sawn timber business are a little more traditional, and digitalisation is just getting started. Some customers feel that new things should be tested before making decisions on them.” According to Salmenkivi, customers are almost invar- iably interested in the opportunities offered by digitali- sation. Moreover, many customers said they would like to collaborate with Metsä Fibre on developing things together on this front. IRREPLACEABLE PEOPLE The interaction between the buyer and seller was high- lighted by all the customers interviewed. “Our customers wanted to highlight that constant con- tact with the seller was extremely important and could not be replaced by digital services. Customers want to
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Pulp analysis and benchmarking With our FIT tool (Furnish Improvement Tool) we can analyse the technical performance of the pulp that you use, and benchmark it against over 200 commercial pulp grades. This service can be carried out fully over online meetings very well.
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