Otava Group is a private, independent, and financially sound media corporation that ranks third among graphic communications publishers in Finland. Otava utilizes the Frends integration platform in its financial processes.
Mikko Lehtinen, IT Manager at Otava, appreciates the reliable cooperation with Frends. At best, Frends fixes errors even before Otava discovers them.
"We find it important to have predictable costs and that we have a proactive and agile partner that aims to solve issues even before we detect them."
Stefan Sirkiä, Sales Manager at Frends, evaluates that the main element of ongoing support services is peace of mind. A fixed-priced contract shares the risk between Frends and its customer.
"We can share the risk and avoid bigger issues as it is our concern genuinely to make sure that our customer has no recurring errors."
Sirkiä describes the enormous amount of data in a large group, such as Otava. The support and maintenance services aim to ensure that the operations run smoothly.
"The service level agreement is built on the customer's needs. For example, we can prioritize different types of integrations. In the most critical cases, the solution time can be, for example, only one hour."
Ongoing maintenance includes monthly service monitoring meetings, in which Frends reports what work has been done and if new development projects should be considered.
"It is great to learn what is on the roadmap. In addition, we learn to understand how to develop our integration platform further", says Lehtinen.
Regarding Lehtinen, the cooperation is smooth due to the comprehensive resources of Frends:
"It can't be taken for granted that Frends has so many integration experts. We are always able to get support quickly. Frends has a straightforward operating method, and even the largest projects are implemented carefully."
Lehtinen highlights that alongside the reliable support, it is relevant how the Frends integration platform provides transparency and independence for in-house development.
"Frends has enabled us that the automatic false reports are understandable, and we can manage simple faults without the help of software developers or Frends. Often there are only extra characters in the material."
Proactive maintenance work is saving the Group 60.000€ per year.
The Otava Group in brief
The Otava Group is Finland’s third-largest diversified media group. We engage in some way with almost all Finns. Our business areas are general literature, learning services, trade, magazine publication and online services:
- Suomalainen Kirjakauppa serves customers at 65 locations around Finland and is always open for business online. Jamera Ltd is a bookstore chain specialising in textbooks. Its range includes both new and secondhand textbooks.
- Otava Publishing Company Ltd publishes fiction, non-fiction and educational materials. This business area also includes Like Publishing, F-Publishing, Nemo, Moreeni, Karisto, Atena Publishing Ltd, Cloubi Ltd and Otava Book Printing Ltd.
- Otava Learning is a Finnish general publisher of educational materials.
- Otavamedia Ltd publishes magazines that are well known to the Finnish public and runs online services. Otavamedia B2B commercial unit provides services such as multichannel advertising solutions, native advertising and the design and production of own media.