Outokumpu CFO: The skills and competences are unbelievable in Lithuania

Outokumpu, a Finnish steel industry giant that has experienced first-hand the effects of decisions made by US President Donald Trump, is going digital. Its service centre operated in Lithuania is being expanded, and the company’s plants and foundries are seeing the installation of robots and artificial intelligence solutions, says Outokumpu’s Chief Financial Officer Pia Aaltonen-Forsell for Lithuanian business outlet Verslo zinios.

According to Pia Aaltenon-Forsell, Outokumpu is very much satisfied with Lithuanian office performance and the conditions in the country for business growth. Moreover, Lithuanian IT teams substantially contribute to the robotic process automation (RPA) that currently is the shift that the company is taking. She stated in the interview for Verslo zinios:

“The skills and competences are unbelievable here – almost a half of all employees work in senior roles, whereas the jobs at the initial level comprise only about a quarter. Here we have finance, IT and public procurement teams and some of the human resources capacities, which are currently being expanded.

Lithuanian IT teams substantially contribute to the robotic process automation (RPA), develop bots and other solutions that can take over non-motivating repetitive tasks that nobody likes but must perform nonetheless, for instance drawing up various reports, transferring data from one system to other, etc. For example, you mentioned the SAP systems. This is excellent software and we use it in numerous units, but not in all of them; as a result, data sometimes has to be transferred manually. RPA is great for the fact that it allows automating such things without investing large amounts in the updating of legacy systems.

So far, IT specialists have been working in this centre trying to automate the processes that occur here; however, as soon as we refine the solutions, we expect to propose them to the entire group. Then, Vilnius will turn into a profit centre rather than being a cost centre”.

Source: Verslo zinios