BACKGROUND OF THE PROCUREMENT
Strategic direction towards 2030
A central goal of Business Finland's Strategy 2030 is to achieve the best customer experience in public administration and to increase Business Finland's impact on the renewal, growth, and internationalization of the Finnish business sector. Achieving this goal requires a shift from the current partly manual, reactive, and expert-dependent operating models towards data-driven, proactive, and scalable customer guidance.
The aim of digitalization is not only the development of systems or the adoption of technology, but a comprehensive renewal of ways of working, processes, and capabilities. Business Finland wants to utilize data, analytics, and artificial intelligence in identifying, guiding, and serving its customers, as well as freeing up its experts' time from background or routine tasks to more impactful customer work.
At the same time, the goal is to strengthen listening to customers and utilizing customer understanding as part of the development of services, operating models, and customer relationships. Customer experience, the impact of customer guidance, and the use of services are monitored and measured systematically so that operations can be continuously improved through data-driven management.
The success of the transformation is assessed using, among others, the following metrics:
• customer experience and customer recommendation
• accuracy of customer guidance
• directing customers to services
• service usage rate
• success in identifying customer needs
• impact of customer activation
• development of customer relationships and utilization of services
• efficiency of expert work and use of automation
• degree of utilization of data, analytics, and artificial intelligence
• impact metrics supporting the realization of Business Finland’s strategic goals.
Current challenges and need for change
Business Finland has conducted a preliminary study on data-driven customer guidance, during which several development areas and bottlenecks in the current state were identified. A long-term development partner is needed to support the organizational change to solve these issues.
The key identified challenges are:
1. Fragmentation of information and limited customer understanding: Information related to customers, markets, services, transactions, interactions, and networks is scattered across multiple systems, data stores, and external data sources. As a result, the organization lacks a unified and up-to-date view of customers, their needs, potential, service usage, transaction history, and current status of the customer relationship. This complicates customer identification, targeting, prioritization, and timely service guidance.
2. Lack of proactiveness and limited utilization of AI-assisted customer guidance: Business Finland lacks systematic capability to identify, prioritize, and guide the right customers to the right services at the right time. The use of AI-assisted analytics, targeting, and service guidance is still limited, which weakens the effectiveness and scalability of customer guidance.
3. Manual customer guidance and expert identification: Matching customer needs to the right services, experts, networks, and ecosystems currently relies largely on manual information retrieval and the experience of individual experts. The organization lacks AI-assisted capability to identify services, experts, and collaboration opportunities best suited to the customer’s situation and to support experts with timely recommendations. This slows down the service process, hinders the utilization of information, and reduces the scalability of customer guidance.
Target state: Model for data-driven and AI-assisted customer guidance
The long-term vision is to build an operating model based on a unified customer view, data-driven decision making, AI-assisted customer guidance, and modern data and AI capabilities. The goal is to form a comprehensive view of customers, their needs, potential, transactions, and service usage, and to use this information in customer identification, guidance, and development.
In the target state, the customer journey is divided into three phases, whose digital capabilities the Supplier must support developing:
1. Identify & Reach
We utilize internal and external data sources to identify new potential growth companies and anticipate customer needs. Customers are targeted timely with services, content, events, and contacts appropriate to their situation, using data, analytics, and AI-assisted targeting.
2. Serve & Solve
We help customers find the services, financial instruments, experts, networks, and internationalization opportunities best suited to their situation. AI-assisted customer guidance supports need identification, expert work, service recommendations, and customers' guidance to appropriate service paths.
3. Monitor & Deepen
We use information on customer development, service usage, and transaction history for continuous development of customer relationships. We anticipate customers’ future needs and proactively recommend the next services, networks, programs, and development paths to support their growth, internationalization, and impact.
For this reason, Business Finland is looking for a partner who not only delivers technical code or architecture descriptions, but can drive change at all levels: creating value-generating use cases, building a solid capability foundation, renewing the organization’s common language and operating models, and leading cultural change and experts' data literacy.
LOT-0000
1
Development Partnership for Data-Driven and AI-Assisted Customer Guidance.
BACKGROUND OF THE PROCUREMENT
Strategic direction towards 2030
A central goal of Business Finland's Strategy 2030 is to achieve the best customer experience in public administration and to increase Business Finland's impact on the renewal, growth, and internationalization of the Finnish business sector. Achieving this goal requires a shift from the current partly manual, reactive, and expert-dependent operating models towards data-driven, proactive, and scalable customer guidance.
The aim of digitalization is not only the development of systems or the adoption of technology, but a comprehensive renewal of ways of working, processes, and capabilities. Business Finland wants to utilize data, analytics, and artificial intelligence in identifying, guiding, and serving its customers, as well as freeing up its experts' time from background or routine tasks to more impactful customer work.
At the same time, the goal is to strengthen listening to customers and utilizing customer understanding as part of the development of services, operating models, and customer relationships. Customer experience, the impact of customer guidance, and the use of services are monitored and measured systematically so that operations can be continuously improved through data-driven management.
The success of the transformation is assessed using, among others, the following metrics:
• customer experience and customer recommendation
• accuracy of customer guidance
• directing customers to services
• service usage rate
• success in identifying customer needs
• impact of customer activation
• development of customer relationships and utilization of services
• efficiency of expert work and use of automation
• degree of utilization of data, analytics, and artificial intelligence
• impact metrics supporting the realization of Business Finland’s strategic goals.
Current challenges and need for change
Business Finland has conducted a preliminary study on data-driven customer guidance, during which several development areas and bottlenecks in the current state were identified. A long-term development partner is needed to support the organizational change to solve these issues.
The key identified challenges are:
1. Fragmentation of information and limited customer understanding: Information related to customers, markets, services, transactions, interactions, and networks is scattered across multiple systems, data stores, and external data sources. As a result, the organization lacks a unified and up-to-date view of customers, their needs, potential, service usage, transaction history, and current status of the customer relationship. This complicates customer identification, targeting, prioritization, and timely service guidance.
2. Lack of proactiveness and limited utilization of AI-assisted customer guidance: Business Finland lacks systematic capability to identify, prioritize, and guide the right customers to the right services at the right time. The use of AI-assisted analytics, targeting, and service guidance is still limited, which weakens the effectiveness and scalability of customer guidance.
3. Manual customer guidance and expert identification: Matching customer needs to the right services, experts, networks, and ecosystems currently relies largely on manual information retrieval and the experience of individual experts. The organization lacks AI-assisted capability to identify services, experts, and collaboration opportunities best suited to the customer’s situation and to support experts with timely recommendations. This slows down the service process, hinders the utilization of information, and reduces the scalability of customer guidance.
Target state: Model for data-driven and AI-assisted customer guidance
The long-term vision is to build an operating model based on a unified customer view, data-driven decision making, AI-assisted customer guidance, and modern data and AI capabilities. The goal is to form a comprehensive view of customers, their needs, potential, transactions, and service usage, and to use this information in customer identification, guidance, and development.
In the target state, the customer journey is divided into three phases, whose digital capabilities the Supplier must support developing:
1. Identify & Reach
We utilize internal and external data sources to identify new potential growth companies and anticipate customer needs. Customers are targeted timely with services, content, events, and contacts appropriate to their situation, using data, analytics, and AI-assisted targeting.
2. Serve & Solve
We help customers find the services, financial instruments, experts, networks, and internationalization opportunities best suited to their situation. AI-assisted customer guidance supports need identification, expert work, service recommendations, and customers' guidance to appropriate service paths.
3. Monitor & Deepen
We use information on customer development, service usage, and transaction history for continuous development of customer relationships. We anticipate customers’ future needs and proactively recommend the next services, networks, programs, and development paths to support their growth, internationalization, and impact.
For this reason, Business Finland is looking for a partner who not only delivers technical code or architecture descriptions, but can drive change at all levels: creating value-generating use cases, building a solid capability foundation, renewing the organization’s common language and operating models, and leading cultural change and experts' data literacy.