Business Tampere brings business data to everyone

Company information as a catalyst for growth

Business Tampere promotes investments and raises awareness of the region as an excellent place to start, grow, work, and internationalize. The company is owned by Tampere, Kangasala, Lempäälä, Nokia, Orivesi, Pirkkala, Vesilahti, and Ylöjärvi.

For a decade now, the company has been assisting businesses in their development by offering various services for business growth, all under one roof and website. Business Tampere believes in the free dissemination of information as a means to drive innovation. “Our goal is to provide our owner municipalities with real-time information to support decision-making, promote investments, and attract new companies and skilled workforce by creating the best environment for businesses,” says Noora Vaaraniemi, Service Manager at Business Tampere.

Fragmented information held Business Tampere back

Business Tampere had a problem: its previous company registry service had reached the end of its road. Its user interface was sub-optimal, and the data wasn’t updating in real-time. Business Tampere wanted to provide the most up-to-date company information in a straightforward manner, but the data was scattered across various paid services. A service was needed that could provide integrated company data from different sources as real-time as possible, all in one place.

The service was custom-developed in collaboration with Hion to reach the desired state. “We were determined to create a service that would display economic data for the Tampere city region in real-time, to cater a need that was growing. In the old implementation, for example, we couldn’t clearly show which companies were growing and which were employing people the most,” reflects Vaaraniemi.

Open source code as a base

For Business Tampere, it was essential to implement the service using open-source code. As a public entity, they wanted to freely share the code with other stakeholders who could choose to adopt, develop, and enhance the service further if they wished.

Business Tampere aimed to create a service that not only provides diverse economic information but also showcases the market area of the Tampere region and the available expertise. The goal was to present this information in a visual format that is easier to digest. It was realized that the previously used configuration wasn’t delivering the desired results, so we decided to create a service gateway that brings company data into the service through various integrations from different sources.

Communication and user-centricity are key in successful projects

It’s rare for a project to go through without any changes to the original plan. It’s especially common to have new development ideas pop up as the project proceeds. This project was no exception, as the first version of the service provided only a starting point for future development ideas. Especially the need for data visualizations and new features, such as map and location data, were emphasized after the first version was launched.

Everything isn’t always up to the client or the implementer, as there can also be external factors that can affect the schedule. In this case, it took longer than expected to connect all the data from the different data sources. So even with the best plan, there can be delays. “We’ve learned during the project that for example for the aforementioned reasons, it can take surprisingly much time to get the different interfaces to function together”, Vaaraniemi mentions.

“We’re pleased with Hion’s flexibility and expertise. These aspects have fostered our cooperation. The work went fluently and we’re happy with what was accomplished”, Vaaraniemi summarizes.

Article image: Mirella Mellonmaa