“Most of our activities can be classed as outsourced research development,” says CEO Pasi Tuominen. “In other words, our software is used in the machines that our clients produce, as embedded industrial systems. When complete, our clients sell their machinery or systems, including our software, to their own clients.”
Wapice develops customized systems for machine and equipment control, and production and inventory management. Two products are currently in particular focus. Summium is a sales tool, which encompasses a host of functions to support sales teams and help them respond quickly and effectively to client enquiries, including product configuration, and real-time price and quotation documentation.
“Summium is used by our clients to sell goods and services to a value of 200 million EUR every year,” points out Mr. Tuominen proudly. Introduced in 2015, the latest addition to the Wapice portfolio is the IoT-TICKET platform, a remote control and management system which enables clients to monitor and control equipment. “For manufacturing lines, we make systems for testing all aspects of automated production, and deliver these to our clients with IoT-TICKET,” explains the CEO.
“We integrated everything our clients need for their business, and the dashboard can be easily built and personalized. Analysis and reporting tools are included, so that clients can generate continuous reports and, in turn, report to their own customers. We sometimes call it IoT-OFFICE, because it has the full palette of applications.” Originally designed for industrial customers, including the energy and manufacturing industries, use of the platform is rapidly expanding to other sectors.
“Town authorities are using it to monitor buildings, traffic congestion, noise and waste management, for example,” says Mr. Tuominen. “We help our customers to be successful in so many ways. Even a big company can quickly increase their competence with our systems.” Competition in the field is intense, but Mr. Tuominen believes that Wapice offers something very special.
“Several companies offer products that are similar to ours, but ours provide so much more. We have built our IoT-TICKET system so we can use all the clouds that the others use – our system cooperates with theirs so our customers can use our software together with that of IBM or Amazon for example,” he points out.
Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Vaasa on the west coast of Finland, Wapice now has ten branches in Finland. “Our branch network means we are able to serve customers locally, and work with universities as well,” continues Mr. Tuominen.
Wapice currently has 340 employees, the vast majority of whom are specialists in the company's technology sectors. The firm's products are exported around the world; although direct exports only account for 5% of sales, around 90% of its systems are exported indirectly as embedded software in clients' machinery.
Wapice has expanded rapidly, and the CEO is anticipating further growth in the coming years, in particular in its international activities. “We have 20 different nationalities amongst our employees and we want to increase that so we can support even more international clients. We want to lead our customers towards digitalization. We have already proved ourselves with our successful tools, processes and expertise, and demonstrated their value. Now we are looking for partners who want to use our IoT-TICKET for their own clients,” he concludes.