Page 3 - Hedengren_vuosikatsaus_2020_EN

CEO's review we must not brush aside our employees’ capacity to succeed even
“Our group strategy was revamped during the business year and
it will run until 2024. A large number of people, clients and our
most important stakeholders from Finland, Sweden, Norway and
Estonia participated in the strategy development.“
In economic terms, 2020 was a rather successful year despite the
COVID-19 pandemic forcing us to abandon many of our original
plans. The pandemic undermined our growth target, but I am de-
lighted to state that our operating margin got close to our initial
budget.
We had a great start to the year across all operations in terms of
sales and finances. In February, we attended an electricity trade
fair in Jyväskylä, where facility automation and system integration
featured prominently. The interest of fairgoers and their feedback
encouraged us to believe that our development work is on the right
track.
After the fair, the world changed in the blink of an eye. We had to re- strategy is more focused on growth than our previous strategy. Our
assess our plans and prepare a COVID-19 emergency plan. The pri-
ority of our development projects was reconsidered and only the
essential ones were realised. Our most significant projects were the
completion of the new product information management system
and the upgraded CRM. We negotiated reserve limits successfully
with our financiers, and at no point did we encounter a situation
where we would have been forced to activate our liquidity manage-
ment emergency plan.
Our direct sales operations were suspended temporarily due to the
health risks and we had to lay off the personnel of Direct for four
months. We began working from home and only our own people
were allowed inside the logistics centre. Our strategy to minimise
health risks has been quite effective and we have not had many
cases of infection. This also applies to our installation teams who
have not taken a toll despite bearing the highest risk of infection.
Under these emergency circumstances, our system and process
development from previous years has paid itself back. Our ERPs
and business-critical IT systems have worked perfectly and en-
abled smooth operation whatever the time or the place. The sys-
tems have created the conditions for good work performance, but
3 OY HEDENGREN AB I ANNUAL REVIEW 2020
under psychologically challenging circumstances. A good example
of our employees’ great work was how we succeeded in improving
our security of supply significantly at group level without investing
a substantial amount of working capital. Our security of supply is
now at a comfortable level.
The pandemic has not prevented us from investing in our growth
potential. We have continued to invest in product development
throughout the pandemic and we are already planning on releas-
ing new solutions that will continue the success of products such
as the unique evacuation system with changing symbols and other
integration solutions launched in 2020. We have also made efforts
to become more international. For example, our formerly 25-em-
ployee staff in Norway has grown into a 34-person team in a year
and our foreign revenue has continued to increase.
Our group strategy was revamped during the business year and it
will run until 2024. A large number of people, clients and our most
important stakeholders from Finland, Sweden, Norway and Esto-
nia participated in the strategy development. The new spearhead
most critical spearheads are product and service business develop-
ment, facility automation, internationalisation, client promise and
appreciative culture. The implementation of the spearhead strate-
gy and the development of our core operations help us create the
best possible conditions for viable growth in the future.
Predicting the market situation of the ongoing year is difficult at
this stage. The economic forecasts are conservatively positive but
the time span of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact remains shroud-
ed in uncertainty. We will continue to develop our business and im-
plement our strategy in 2021 with a cautiously optimistic approach.
Marek Hintze