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- Insight
- Strategy
Growth, profitability, and overall awesomeness – Into’s year 2024
Author
Aapo Mäki
In this article, I’ll share insights into our 2024 at Into-Digital Oy. We specialize in creating websites, web stores, and web applications. I’ll talk about money, challenges, and successes. My name is Aapo Mäki, and my job is to steer our company toward becoming ever more skilled, attractive and bigger.
Because money is always of interest
Typically, our financial performance sparks curiosity—not just among readers, but also among our employees and us entrepreneurs. For some, more than others. That’s why I’ll start with the money talk.
In 2023, we focused on building the foundations for growth, even at the expense of profitability. As a result, we ended the year with a small and controlled negative result. This made 2024 the year to harvest the first fruits of the seeds we planted the year before.
Our financial goals for 2024 were clear: at least 10% growth with at least 5% profitability. In this rather uncertain market situation, that was a solid, albeit not easy, target to hit.
Here’s where we landed in the end:
2,5
€ million in revenue. +15% growth compared to the previous year.
0,38
€ million in operating profit. +15% of revenue.
Financially, 2024 turned out to be a really great year. Not least because our success allowed us to reward our employees as well. The operating profit figure mentioned earlier already accounts for the bonus distributed to our staff, amounting to 10% of our operating profit. We’ve practiced this reward model for ages, and it seems to work well—judging by our team’s feedback.
Not all celebrations
Of course, there were challenges—fortunately, relatively few. The main ones we had to wrestle with included:
Private Sector
Demand from the private sector remained somewhat underwhelming throughout the year. I attribute this to both the overall market situation and ourselves.
Noticing the low volume of inquiries from companies prompted us to reflect: What might be wrong with us? It was time to consider how we look and sound. Yep. More on this topic later in the article.
Sales
We took a heavy hit in a few sales cases that were particularly important to us. This raised questions about whether our typical approach to pitching web service projects is significantly flawed.
That said, we also succeeded in sales, as the numbers show. Still, I believe that if we had been at the top of our game in sales, our growth could have been even stronger.
Internal Comms
This year, I managed to fail in a few seemingly minor internal communication efforts, earning well-deserved criticism from our team. Nothing too dramatic, thankfully, but foolish nonetheless.
Internal communication has been one of the key focus areas in our growth journey. It’s an area of improvement that both I and the entire organization are actively addressing.
The Uncertainty of Early 2024
The year 2024 started on shaky ground. As a result, we had to initiate co-operation negotiations affecting some of our staff, ultimately leading to the termination of one employment contract.
It’s not pleasant work. However, the process taught both me and the organization a lot. It was also a strong reminder that success is never guaranteed, and growth rarely comes without challenges.
In the end, this process played a part in ensuring that we didn’t have a single unprofitable month throughout the year. One of my responsibilities is to secure the financial stability of our company. Unfortunately, this sometimes requires tough decisions—decisions where others bear the brunt of the consequences, not me.
Leadership? Sometimes sucks.
Much more good than bad
When a consulting business is doing well financially, it typically indicates that other areas, aside from financials, are also in good shape. And that’s how it is with us too.
Public Sector
I promised a couple of years ago that our time in public competitions would come. And it did. We managed to pull ourselves up in practically all of the public tenders in 2024, if not in first place, then close to the top. As a result, we’re working with cities such as Parkano, Rovaniemi, Nokia, Kangasala, and Tampere, as well as the state-owned company Motiva.
Personnel
There are no words big enough to thank and praise our staff. I am sincerely grateful for each and every one of them. Every single day.
My colleagues made great strides in their development last year.
In addition to taking our work seriously, it seems our staff really enjoys working with each other. Or rather, really enjoys it.
Turnover was once again low. Typically, we’ve had to part with 0-2 people each year. Last year, we had to do so as well.
Luckily, we also welcomed several new colleagues. That’s a wonderful thing. Hopefully, they stay for a long time (ideally forever), just like most of our team seems to.
Customer Satisfaction
The vast majority of our clients love us. Both project feedback discussions and satisfaction surveys from our Care service regularly remind us that we’re doing many things right.
We can only succeed if our clients are happy.
Care Business
Our Care business has grown to the point where it generated nearly half of our total revenue in 2024—49%, to be exact.
The recipe is simple: we serve our clients with quality, speed, and insight. We advance our clients’ businesses, not just code.
In 2024, the number of websites under our Care service increased from around 150 to over 200, which is nearly a 25% rise. The number of Care clients is now around 150.
It seems that for different organizations, it is justifiably very important that the website maintenance partnership works in the best possible way.
Development Responsibilities
We are highly eager to constantly improve the way we do things. For that to happen, our experts need to develop our operations. And specifically, our experts. Without me being there to act as the wise one. Last year, we organized our development teams as follows. I’m only involved in the management team:
- Management Team
- Dev Development Team
- Design Development Team
- Project Development Team
- Dev Meeting (all developers weekly)
- Design Meeting (all designers weekly)
One of the coolest aspects of leadership is when you get to enjoy continuous development without having done anything yourself.
C's
We also adjusted titles and leadership responsibilities. The year 2025 kicks off with the following leadership roles:
- Me (overall responsibility, sales, marketing)
- COO-Otto (project practices, project profitability, sales support)
- CTO-Antti (technical quality and technical practices)
- CBO-Arto (overall responsibility for the Care business and business growth)
Whoa, everything starts anew
Entrepreneurship is an exciting endeavor from a financial perspective. The mindset is intuitively that with the turn of the year, everything starts fresh. In a way, it really does.
We’re kicking off the new year with a nice pace. Both the project teams’ and the Care business calendars are looking great well into the spring.
First and foremost, I hope for the following in 2025:
Growth and Profitability
We want to continue growing. Profitably..
Development of Work Content
We want to create and develop bigger and more interesting digital services. And we want to do this better all the time.
Growth in Private Sector Demand
How will this happen? Through marketing.
We’ve revamped our brand identity and digital advertising. The goal, of course, is to increase demand for our services, particularly from businesses.
Keep an eye on Kauppalehti in February-March. We’ll be making a noticeable appearance considering our size.
Employee Well-being and Growth
For any of the above to happen, our team needs to thrive. Thriving typically involves a good atmosphere, personal growth, the right workload, and suitably challenging tasks. This is what we’re aiming for.
In sum
So, 2024 was mostly a great year. However, there’s still a lot of work to do to make 2025 even better.
Let’s get to work!
It’s worth talking to us
If you’re looking for a partner for your website renewal or potentially its ongoing maintenance, we recommend having a conversation with us. Whether you ultimately choose us or not, we promise that our discussions will provide you with valuable insights that will benefit you.
