During the first months in the post, Pääkkönen was delighted with the Arnon personnel’s strong spirit of making things happen. A year of managing Arnon behind, Pääkkönen still thinks that this spirit, seen both internally and with the stakeholders, customers, and suppliers, is the company’s most rewarding feature.
What changes have taken place during the year?
“We have renewed Arnon’s organizational structure so that the Finland, Sweden, and Poland country organizations’ structures match Arnon group’s functional structure. This has enabled us to clarify roles and responsibilities in between the global group functions and the country organisations’ functions.
In addition to the structural reform, we have strengthened the Swedish organization with new appointments, including a new local CEO. The CEO has successfully kickstarted the cooperation with key stakeholders from the very beginning.
In connection with the strategy revamp, we founded and resourced a project management function. We updated the roles, responsibilities, and the whole process of managing Arnon’s customer projects. From now on, project-based customer relationships will be handled using the new process. This change intends to support growth and build our capacity.
Communication is a vitally important field that can always be improved. During the past year, we have focused on the implementation of our new strategy and the communication of the monthly changing themes of the management annual clock. Using regular monthly briefings, we have been able to communicate with the entire personnel. The feedback we’ve received on the communications development has been very positive.”
What do you see for Arnon’s future?
“The autumn’s key objectives are related to optimizing the working capital and continuously improving the delivery reliability. The suppliers and component availability situation is starting to normalize, thanks to which we can further improve the delivery reliability for our customers. In the same breath, it must be added that there are still certain components with long delivery times.
The improved availability of components brings a positive vibe to the entire organization. We have had to wrestle with these problems a fair amount during the past years. I believe that the normalized situation will improve efficiency as well as personnel and customer satisfaction.
Our customer base is global and diverse. We have several operational pillars – the fields of marine, energy, mining, and industrial machine manufacturing. In addition, the green transition and electrification of society will support the market growth now and in the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, the market does have some grey clouds gathered over it, mostly seen in the field of the construction industry. This does not affect us directly but may be reflected in our field of operations. I personally think positively that the recession will be short-lived.
We will further our implementation of the growth strategy. We strive to be the preferred partner for our existing customers and grow together with them. At the same time, we are seeking new customers.
The potential that Arnon holds for the future is exciting. We have highly skilled and motivated personnel. Our locations in Finland, Sweden, and Poland are a solid foothold for internationalization and set us apart from many of our competitors. We can operate in several countries and thus better fulfill the needs of our customers.
The change that has taken place over the past year is inspirational, and I am eager to see what fruits our work will bear in the future.”
