Tommi Piispa

Interest, challenge, and reward

Having joined Cadmatic in 2007, Tommi Piispa is one of the company’s veterans. Today, as a Senior Applications Specialist, he acts as a bridge between Cadmatic and their customers.

Bridging the gap

“When I started back in the mid-2000s we were a smaller company and mostly working in Finland,” Tommi explains from his Orimattila office. Over the last fifteen or so years he has seen how Cadmatic has evolved. “We were more focused on a specific way of using the product back then, but these days we have developed products that are much wider in their potential. Nowadays in the global market there are so many more use cases and ways of working which require us to be more flexible.”

He has always worked as the face of the company, bridging the gap between customers and developers. “I do a lot of things, but not direct sales or coding,” he smiles. “Mainly I support our customers however I can. One very interesting part of my work is bringing ideas and needs from the customer to our development teams and figuring out how to create better solutions.” With Cadmatic’s expansion, his work is also more global than it used to be. “Our market has changed from Finland to worldwide, and I’ve also moved to the marine segment, which gives my work a new perspective and motivation. There’s always something old to share and new to learn.”

From Finland, with love

With Cadmatic’s global growth, Tommi has spent more time travelling to new markets and communicating the benefits of the company’s products to a wider audience. “With this growth come some challenges but also opportunities,” he explains. “Breaking into new markets can be hard when there are already established competitors. However, we are very certain where our strengths lie. There are bigger companies in the market, but we provide an elasticity that they do not. We listen carefully to our customers because we want to be close to them so we can provide them with effective products.

“And, after all, if everyone is using the same products in exactly the same way then how can they get an advantage from that? I believe the real advances come from within our customers. We provide a flexible product, and they can adapt it to their own ways of working to give them advantages over their competitors.”

It might be remarked that it is not so common for small companies from Finland to spread across the globe, but for Tommi it’s not so surprising. The focus on customer needs is a central part of what has made Cadmatic such a strong business. “There might be a stereotype of Finns as not talking,” he laughs, “but at Cadmatic we always do, and that’s what drives us forward. Of course, there might be cultural differences, or rules and standards that affect functionalities, but I’m really proud of the fact that from such a small country we have built a strong company from scratch. Improving ourselves and helping our customers brings its own rewards.”

Success is its own reward

Indeed, it is the feeling of reward that drives Tommi’s enthusiasm for his job. Satisfaction comes from many places. “It can be rewarding getting positive feedback from customers, especially in those cases where we have helped or guided them on the right path with our application, they’ve used the product for a while, and you can see that they have become experts themselves and are really discovering the possibilities. And from the technical point of view, when our developers create new features in a couple of months that might have taken a year, that were suggested by our customers, that success makes my job fulfilling as well.”

So, as a Cadmatic veteran, what would Tommi say to anyone thinking about joining the company? “I’d say that it's easy to come into this company. We have many different personalities so just be yourself. And for newcomers, no-one knows everything. Be open, ask questions, give opinions. That’s the way we can together learn and create something bigger.”