c/o Workland
Keilaniementie 1, 02150 Espoo
Invoicing:
003710258339
Apix Messaging Oy (003723327487)
003710258339@procountor.apix.fi
Aceve is a SaaS company delivering cloud-based, AI-driven software for the construction industry. Operating across Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, and Germany, Aceve has grown rapidly via strategic acquisitions and organic expansion. In 2024 the company added four businesses, and in the first half of 2025 it acquired two more. Aceve’s growth strategy combines organic growth with targeted M&A.
“We needed a partner that could be extremely agile and work with us to make sure we can get things done quickly, enabling us to have a quick start at the beginning of the year as one company.” Jonas Ostlund
Acquisitions brought diverse operating models and multiple CRM systems. Data sat scattered across different tools and country organisations operated in silos, making consolidated reporting, operational control and scalable sales and marketing difficult. Aceve needed a repeatable way to onboard new companies into one operating model, harmonise customer and project management, and enable cross-selling between product lines.
Aceve (formerly HVD Group) had Salesforce in Sweden and Denmark and wanted to replicate the Danish setup as a template for other countries. After an initial attempt to adapt the template for Finland fell short, Aceve selected Loikka Solutions to build a new, replicable template from scratch — starting with Finland.
Loikka designed a core CRM foundation to bring marketing, customer management, sales and project management under a single, standardised model.
Loikka designed a core CRM foundation to bring marketing, customer management, sales and project management under a single, standardised model. The template was first deployed in Norway (Q4 2023) and rolled out in Finland in January 2024. From there it was replicated across acquired companies in other countries and ultimately deployed at the Swedish headquarters, where Loikka also helped decommission the old system and migrate to the new one.
As the programme scaled, the project grew to cover about 150 users across six countries. Jonas Ostlund was appointed Head of Operations and project lead to consolidate 15 companies into a single Aceve. Achieving that required significant organisational realignment and close user engagement.
Ostlund and Loikka’s Head of Sales, Samuli Rantala, held regular meetings and engaged in ongoing discussions across multiple channels with local teams to ensure the new processes were practical and adoptable. Loikka’s role extended beyond technical implementation: they helped define processes and supported change management to secure user buy-in.
Loikka’s role extended beyond technical implementation: they helped define processes and supported change management to secure user buy-in.
“Actually [Samuli] was more than just a Salesforce consultant. He was a key to defining several of the processes that we have in place today”, Ostlund notes.
“Loikka has worked very well with the team, providing overall support, making quick changes and adaptations, and helping us gradually find our way toward becoming that one company.”
A joint team of around ten people, from both Aceve and Loikka, continues to refine Aceve’s Salesforce platform. With core settings in place, the focus is now on process optimisation and integrating backend systems to make the platform as fast and frictionless as possible for sales teams – a key priority given Aceve’s high transaction volumes and relatively small customer sizes.
For fast-growing, acquisition-driven SaaS companies, a replicable M&A template combined with user-centred change management creates true scaleability: it speeds integration, preserves deal value, and turns a portfolio of companies into a single, high-performing organisation.
In spring 2025, we organised several webinars (in Finnish) where Jussi Starck from Salesforce gave excellent demos of Agentforce agents. In preparation for one of the webinars, Jussi made an interesting point: one of the challenges of using AI is that end users don’t always know what AI can do.
This is to be expected: AI is developing at such a dizzying pace that few people are aware of the latest applications. On the other hand, lack of knowledge may be a reason not to experiment with AI if the potential benefits are not known.
For many people, the first image of AI is that it retrieves information or fills in blanks. In reality, AI can do much more.
An Agentforce agent, for example, does not just search their own CRM to find out what the best sales opportunities are for the salesperson. It can build a rich analysis of the client company based on publicly available data. It takes into account industry trends, news and even the competitive landscape. This means that the salesperson has a direct insight into what is relevant for the client company right now.
This means that the salesperson gets a direct insight into what is relevant to the client company right now.
So don’t just ask the AI to populate customer data or do a SWOT or Pestel analysis of a key customer in the CRM system, but ask it to provide an analysis using multiple data sources on how the latest industry megatrends affect customer engagement, taking into account the customer’s past product usage. And based on this, suggest how the customer should be approached.
This may not replace the industry and customer knowledge of an experienced salesperson, but even in such situations it can complement it and speed up the work.
What about CRM maintenance? It’s easy to think that it’s mainly a matter of filling in missing phone numbers or addresses. In reality, however, there is more potential.
For example, if your sales process involves identifying customer pain points and recording them in your CRM, AI can find them for you. It can read through email communications with the customer, pick up any challenges that arise and automatically update the information in the CRM. The end result is richer customer data faster than before. This allows the salesperson to focus on what really makes the sale.
It is also becoming easier and easier to make data available to AI.
It is also becoming easier and easier to make data available to AI. Video conferencing software automatically takes notes of the meeting, and after a live meeting you can dictate the notes to your phone, for example, as you walk to your car. Even from the dictation, the AI can pick up the most important things on the fly and, for example, suggest updating the appropriate fields immediately.
The use of AI can easily remain superficial if it is only used for obvious, small tasks. The greatest value comes when it is used for heavier, time-consuming work, such as analysis, prioritisation and proposal writing.
As we learn to ask more of AI, it can free up salespeople’s time to do what humans excel at – building trust and helping customers.
At the beginning of 2024, Raisio started a project to create sales processes for field and chain sales and integrate them into Salesforce’s CRM system. Loikka Solutions was chosen as the partner.
In Raisio, a typical situation of today had come to light: there was no lack of data, on the contrary, there was too much of it and it was scattered.
“It’s not just the amount of data that helps, it’s what you can do with the data in different places, such as sales, marketing and customer service, that drives results. This is what we call data activation,” says Aki Sopanen of Loikka.
Jouni Aura, Raisio’s Country Director for Finland and the Baltics, says that Raisio wanted to grow its business based on data together with its customers. For Raisio, investing in data and analytics is a key way to create competitive advantage.
Data and analytics enable salespeople and sales teams to succeed.
“Data and analytics enable salespeople and sales teams to succeed, and [Raisio] is passionate about developing people’s knowledge and skills and using data to empower them to succeed in their work.”
The challenge has been that it has been difficult to extract information from the rich and fragmented data in a way that could be used to take action.
“How to use data to do the right things at the right time and in the right place in a consumer- and customer-centric way – that’s data-driven selling at its best. A certain kind of technology is just the solution to that,” explains Aura.
In collaboration with Loikka, Raisio implemented Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud.
The first steps were to create everyday sales processes for field sales and chain sales. Those processes were then integrated into Salesforce.
Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud helps salespeople plan their activities and drive sales processes by providing information at the right points. It has enabled Raisio to really start activating data. Specifically, Salesforce gives sales reps, for example, insight into when to visit customers and where, and how to prepare for a sale with each customer.
In concrete terms, Salesforce gives salespeople information on when to visit customers, where to visit them and how to prepare for a sale with each customer.
It was clear to Raisio that a big project like this needed the right partners, vision and direction. The journey with Salesforce is just beginning, but Aura says that with Loika, the project has progressed at an agile pace. In less than a year, the sales organisation’s processes have been sharpened and are already up and running:
“This has been a good learning journey for me. In the past, I’ve encountered CRM projects that took several years, but here CRM was up and running in a month, and then we started to develop it in an agile way. It wasn’t a case of someone building something and then seeing if it worked, but rather a system that was constantly being developed.”
Although Raisio’s journey towards more customer-centric data-driven sales is still in its early stages, the results have been significant and promising. Aura reports positive developments in terms of outlets, product turnover rates and distribution coverage. In addition, a recent customer satisfaction survey for field sales shows that the trend in customer satisfaction has improved dramatically.
We don’t just look at what has happened, we also try to understand the next step, which is why something happens.
“The results are influenced by doing the right things in-store with customers, but at the same time using data to see what our marketing is doing and the impact of that marketing. We’re not just looking at what’s happened, we’re trying to understand the next step, which is why something is happening,” says Aura.
Now that Raisio has fine-tuned its processes and put Salesforce in place to drive day-to-day operations from a sales organisation perspective, the next steps in the project are related to multi-channel customer care and the opportunities it offers. The aim is to bring data more broadly to customers, so they can use data to improve sales and stay on top of where they’re going.
Raisio has a constant improvement and development mindset, so from their point of view, it’s never finished. The goal is always moving:
“Customers’ needs and expectations are constantly changing and raising the bar, and we always strive to meet those expectations. Of course, we want to constantly improve our processes to make them more efficient, but technology is also evolving rapidly and offers opportunities. It is important to remember that you have people, you have processes and you have technologies, and if you strive to develop them all in an agile and simultaneous way, you can maintain a competitive advantage in a changing environment.”
With the expansion of the hotel chain, Lapland Hotels & Safaris saw the need to structure its sales activities. We have been using a Salesforce license package since 2013,” says Thumas Miilumäki, CRM Operations & Development Manager at Lapland Hotels & Safaris.
Originally, the system was intended to be an end-to-end solution that would guide sales, customer relationship management, marketing and day-to-day customer service. In practice, however, Salesforce remained disconnected from the company’s day-to-day processes and users did not feel that it provided significant benefits or added value. In everyday life, the use of Salesforce may even have been perceived as an additional workload and therefore remained limited.
Loikka Solutions is well aware of the problem. Loikka’s Matti Sartonen says that, unfortunately, digital systems are often developed and sold in an engineering-oriented way, which does not necessarily understand the needs of the company and its business.
“If Salesforce is unpleasant or difficult to use, or if you feel that it is not useful but rather an extra workload, then it is not built right,” says Sartonen.
At the beginning of 2024, Lapland Hotels & Safaris started to actively explore different system options and IT partners. Salesforce was considered for retirement as it had not served the needs of the organisation. There was also a problem of overlap, as Hotel Haiko Kartano was part of the hotel chain and had a completely different customer management system in place.
Miilumäki says that there were complex discussions on the subject. Both the company’s management and the consulting partners initially thought that it might be more sensible to start from scratch and introduce a completely new system, which would not be associated with preconceived ideas or negative experiences in the minds of the staff. Surprisingly, however, it turned out that the attitudes towards Salesforce within the organisation were largely positive and users saw potential in the system if it was more firmly embedded in their own processes.
Surprisingly, however, it turned out that attitudes towards Salesforce in the organisation were largely positive, and users saw potential in the system.
In the end, Salesforce proved to be both the most suitable and cost-effective solution for the company’s needs. Loikka Solutions was chosen as the partner.
“Loikka has a good understanding of our history with Salesforce and the pain points that have been involved. It was also important for us to find a partner that understands the services business and is willing to listen to us and learn the core of our business and our values, rather than just going system or technology first.”
The first phase of the project will focus on standardising and automating the processes of the corporate sales team. The result will be a reduction in manual work and therefore the risk of errors.
“It has already been tried once, to put a system with comprehensive functions in place and expect it to intuitively go about its business. Now we decided to do things differently and look more for solutions in those areas of everyday work where agility, efficiency and aspects that facilitate and support the work could be introduced.”
They wanted a fresh start with the system. Lapland Hotels & Safari abandoned the data collected by Salesforce over the last 10 years and started collecting data with new definitions and a forward-looking approach.
There is a lot of talk these days about the use of artificial intelligence, and the quality of data is an essential part of that,” Sartonen points out. If a system is considered cumbersome or redundant, it will not be used, and the data will not be comprehensive or up-to-date. So a system that does not support everyday processes well also causes problems from a data quality point of view. It easily leads to a negative spiral and is poison for the organisation’s AI plans.
According to Miilumäki, in discussions with the teams, it has been seen as helpful to get rid of old data. Getting rid of old data does not mean wasting it: it is possible to access the data that is archived now at a later date, should the need arise. However, it is more cost-effective not to have to clean up old data before starting a project.
In cooperation with Loika, a development pipeline was designed for Lapland Hotels & Safaris, with several development actions lined up after the first phase. Miilumäki praises Loikka’s proactive and process-oriented approach.
“We wanted to have active weekly communication so that we could develop and correct operations quickly if necessary. It is important for us that we don’t just wait for something to happen by a single deadline. With Loika, active thinking is always present. They help us challenge our own processes while we develop the system.”
With Loika, active thinking is always present. They help us challenge our own processes while we develop the system.
For Lapland Hotels & Safaris, customer satisfaction is the most important factor in all development. The aim is to gather experience and customer data from the first phase and to plan the next steps based on that.
“Our vision is to get to know our customers even better and to provide a more seamless and holistic service.”
Initially, Sales Cloud will be introduced from the Salesforce products, but Miilumäki says that in the future, there may also be a need for Service Cloud, which will help to build a more comprehensive set of customer data with less manual work. The aim is to provide customers with the best service. That’s where Loika can be of great help. “It’s good to be able to ask questions, consult and challenge your own thinking, and that’s where a partner like Loika with a broad repertoire and business insight is a great asset. One of the cornerstones of this acquisition was that we were looking for a partner who would not only solve this very specific problem for us in the first phase, but would be willing to work with us to develop CRM operations and
c/o Workland
Keilaniementie 1, 02150 Espoo
Invoicing:
003710258339
Apix Messaging Oy (003723327487)
003710258339@procountor.apix.fi