SE Mäkinen is a car transport and logistics company with a strong team of professionals. Nowadays, many of their processes run smoothly and automatically with Lotta Hyperautomation provided by twoday AI Works, but that wasn't always the case...
SE Mäkinen is a family-owned company with a long tradition in transportation services, from which the company has expanded to ports, import controls, localization of cars and forwarding operations.
Over 70 years of history with stable annual growth is a challenging combination for software usability and everyday operations.
Before deploying hyperautomation, some of the most time-consuming processes at SE Mäkinen involved circulating spreadsheets and other manual tasks that used to require four or five people full time.
Development Manager Reijo Pursiainen at SE Mäkinen in Hanko, the most Southern city in Finland, realized something needed to be done:
“With new projects coming in and workload increasing, we couldn’t afford to have several people doing redundant manual labour anymore. And hiring more people wasn’t an option.”
SE Mäkinen needed to find a way to make slow manual processes more efficient.
Low Risks, Fast Kick-Off
Even though renewing the company’s automation wasn’t in the pipeline, the risk-free and agile implementation of Lotta Hyperautomation made SE Mäkinen hit the start button to kick off collaboration with AI Works.
“The start-up cost was reasonable and the first project required very little effort from our end.” Reijo Pursiainen, Development Manager, SE Mäkinen.
Lotta Hyperautomation is an intelligent robotic process automation software that replaces multiple manual tasks and repetitive processes at SE Mäkinen and handles everything quickly with practically no errors.
The 24/7/365 service provided by Lotta receives high praises from SE Mäkinen and how automation has helped tackle staff shortages has been a positive surprise to Grete-Maj Öblom who works as a system administrator at SE Mäkinen in Hanko.
“You don’t need anyone to fill in for days off as Lotta covers all holidays and sick leaves.”
SE Mäkinen plans to expand the use of hyperautomation as soon as possible.
Working Together As A Team
It took a while for the staff to get used to Lotta Hyperautomation.
According to Öblom, people were worried that a robot would replace the staff. That’s why it was essential to involve the whole personnel from the very beginning and offer everyone a chance to participate in defining which tasks would be automated.
As a result, Lotta Hyperautomation freed up a lot of hours, allowing employees to focus on more meaningful work – tasks that require human touch.
What's more, automation is just the first pit stop on the way to a long-term partnership. SE Mäkinen has been delighted to have a designated expert from Visma AI Works working with them as part of the SE Mäkinen team.
With such a close-knit partnership, everything flows effortlessly as Mari Rinne, Customer Success Manager from twoday AI Works, describes:
“Our collaboration has worked seamlessly from the start, and instead of a traditional customer-supplier relationship, we work as a team towards a common goal.”
With twoday AI Works and Lotta Hyperautomation the no-fuss deployment and agile way of working has yielded measurable benefits.
SE Mäkinen is happy to set a positive example and encourage other companies to give automation a chance.
If you're wasting time and money, struggling with redundant manual processes, Pursiainen and Öblom from SE Mäkinen both have the same advice: Just go for it and try automation!
“With the right partner, the risk is minimal and the deployment of intelligent automation is fast and easy.”