Terrafame

Battery chemicals producer Terrafame is facing major changes: the company is starting up a battery chemicals plant in Sotkamo, where nickel will be refined into battery chemicals used in electric vehicle batteries. With this transformation, Terrafame will join the value chain of global battery industry operators, where an entirely new market—formed by battery manufacturers and international car factories—is now emerging. The refining of nickel and the production of battery chemicals are expected to grow enormously in the coming years, and Terrafame’s goal, as a reliable and traceable supplier, is to play an active role in this ecosystem.

As Terrafame moves into a truly new and rapidly growing market, they had a clear need to better understand and manage customer information and customer dynamics. The company decided to digitalize and modernize the tracking and management of its sales projects—that is, its CRM system—as well as certain critical business functions that had previously been handled in hundreds of Excel files.

“We are transitioning from being a nickel intermediate producer to a producer of pure specialty chemicals, and in this business, the functionality of responsibility systems is crucial. Members of the battery production value chain have a strong need to ensure not only the availability of raw materials but also their origin. Our sales are fundamentally based on responsibility and reliability, meaning we must be able to guarantee our customer promise. This is exactly why we need effective customer information and customer promise management,” says Terrafame’s Commercial Director Janne Palosaari.

A tight project with Sulava

When the customer data system modernization project began in 2020, it was already known that roughly a year later Terrafame would start delivering battery chemicals — and by then, the critical parts of the system had to be operational. In the first phase, the tracking and reporting of sales projects was implemented, and in the second phase, the tracking of battery chemical and other product deliveries was built as the basis for billing processes.

The intensive project, carried out in close cooperation with Sulava, was mostly completed last autumn, followed by a testing period of a few months during which the old and new systems ran in parallel.

The project was carried out directly between Terrafame’s commercial department and Sulava. Executive team member Janne Palosaari took part in defining requirements, and active discussions were held directly with end users. Terrafame’s IT department participated when needed, mainly during the creation of user access rights.

“A major aspect of our new system is that many of our partners also input data and generate reports. All of our logistics partners — including ports and forwarding agents — are involved in collecting data for tracking customer deliveries,” Palosaari says.

Power Platform enabled automation

Moving from Excel files to a reporting system meant a significant automation of data flow, and this was achieved using Microsoft’s Power Platform technology. Terrafame had already adopted Microsoft O365 earlier, and although open source solutions were initially explored, the implementation was ultimately carried out efficiently by configuring ready made Microsoft platform products.

“Power Platform was tailored to fit our needs with the philosophy that the way data is entered should require as few customized changes as possible. We wanted to build a system that is easy to develop further, requires minimal maintenance, and doesn’t make us dependent on a single provider. With this solution, we were also able to integrate functionalities from other areas of O365, and the tools are familiar to our users,” Palosaari explains.

The efficiency taken to a new level

The introduction of the new system delivered immediate results: the tracking of sales projects became more efficient, and the time spent on manual work as well as the number of errors decreased significantly. The new system has also helped refocus time on other development areas required by the new line of business.

“From the CRM perspective, we have now reached the reporting level where we want to be and which reflects our company’s promise of efficiency. When customer promises can be reported efficiently, fulfilling them is also ensured,” Palosaari explains.

Sulava provided above all strong business understanding

According to Palosaari, the cooperation with us worked extremely well, and the genuine approach to understanding business needs deserves special praise. Together with us, the company reviewed all commercial models and jointly created a process model that now forms the foundation of the entire company’s business.

“It was great to see how your experienced experts systematically started to break down the needs of our business. As an operating model, this differs significantly from simply ordering one large, customized solution. Now we can take one module into use at a time and assess its functionality before planning the next steps,” Palosaari says appreciatively.

Published: June 2021
Writer: Juhani Lassila