TerraWise

The infrastructure-sector specialist company Terrawise needed to improve its project management processes and tools. Based on detailed value chain analyses, Sulava helped the company build a highly user friendly, automation based system, developed at a rapid pace using Microsoft’s Power Platform products.

Terrawise, which operates in the construction and infrastructure sector, carries out diverse projects of various sizes for its customers in infrastructure construction, earthworks, landscaping, and blasting. The company employs many technical professionals who manage projects and, depending on their role, produce, retrieve, store, and share information related to those projects. To manage these projects and internal processes, Terrawise wanted a new system.

A tailored solution for the company

In the early stages of its software project aimed at improving project efficiency, Terrawise examined many existing system packages with the goal of finding a solution that would meet the needs of the entire organization. Ultimately, the company decided to carry out the specification work itself in collaboration with us.

“Our goal from the very beginning was to build a business driven system that is as easy to use as possible and that broadly meets the needs of our whole organization,” says Antti Matikainen, Terrawise’s Development Manager, who was responsible for the project. “Our company has six different units whose employees have very different needs, and we couldn’t find a single ready made solution that would suit all of them. This is why we decided to build a tailored solution for ourselves together with Sulava.”

A close examination of the value chains

In the early phase of the project, a value chain analysis was carried out based on internal interviews. In this analysis, the value adding factors of different parts of the organization, the participants in each process, the ways of working, timings, and IT systems were defined.

“We spent three months building this analysis aimed at understanding the overall picture, after which we had a clear understanding of the needs the new system had to meet. The central idea was to increase the efficiency of current operations with an automation based system rather than to change the processes themselves,” Matikainen explains.

Ease of use in a key role

“Our starting point was to create a clear, intuitive system that is easy to use even with very minimal ICT skills,” Matikainen says.
User friendliness was at the very core of designing and building Terrawise’s new system. They wanted to make access to the software as effortless as possible, and a great deal of attention was paid to usability at every stage of the project.

Through automation and clear navigation, the aim was to ensure that all essential information could be accessed with a minimum number of clicks. Technical details were intentionally hidden from the user to maximize clarity. Device independence was also emphasized—mobile use was optimized to genuinely support the user.

The user interface and the application run in Microsoft Teams, and the data comes from SharePoint, enabling seamless use across different environments. Project workspaces are provisioned automatically into Teams, where the planning sections are located on their own tabs.

Power Platform tools as the engine

In the technical implementation of the new system, Microsoft Power Platform tools—designed for business development and process efficiency—were utilized. Thanks to the automated capabilities of these tools, the project progressed rapidly after the initial specification phase – there was already something to demonstrate on the very first day.

With Power Automate, automated and intelligent workflows were built based on the company’s own specifications. This allowed the system to achieve the required and desired speed and ease of use.

With PowerApps, applications were built to deliver the needed functionalities by leveraging the data stored in SharePoint. PowerApps makes it possible to build custom business applications with their own user interfaces without traditional software development.

Personalized training to reach the finish line

The rollout of the new system began gradually in July 2020, and the training work is still ongoing now in September.

“Even though the idea is for the system to be as easy to use as possible, training plays a critical role in the success of the project. A product like this is only as good as how people experience it, and users need to be able to get started effortlessly,” Matikainen says.

The users of the system work across Terrawise’s six teams, and their skill levels and needs vary so greatly that the company decided not to arrange any mass trainings at all. Instead, all training is delivered personally.

Close cooperation despite the coronavirus

Collaboration with Sulava proceeded efficiently even though the work took place in the middle of the COVID spring. Progress followed an iterative approach: based on the predefined value chain specifications, development advanced piece by piece, and different areas were brought into production—starting with the largest components and then moving on to smaller ones.

“For us, this way of working was very pleasant and flexible, and the project felt like it progressed smoothly,” says Matikainen, who led the project at Terrawise. “We were in constant interactive contact with Sulava’s consultant, which was also one of the keys to achieving a good end result.”

According to Matikainen, a crucial factor in the success of such a project is how many resources the company itself dedicates to it: “It is extremely important to understand what people want from a system like this, and the company must invest heavily in that work itself. This is something you should never fully outsource.”

TerraWise Oy

TerraWise Oy is a comprehensive operator in the infrastructure sector, serving customers in the Uusimaa, Pirkanmaa, and Southwest Finland regions.

Writer: Juhani Lassila
Published in September 2020