YIT

Unified Data Platform enabling the next leap towards YIT’s data driven strategic targets

Photo by Artem Labunsky

The largest Finnish development and construction company YIT is consistently developing their data capabilities to enable more data-driven business, better services to customers and sustainable competitive edge in highly competitive markets. Over the years, the extensive co-operation of YIT and Solita has resulted in true business value for YIT and made data a strategic asset for YIT.

YIT is the largest Finnish and a significant North European urban developer and construction company with a 2,9 B€ turnover in 2021, employing 7000 people in ten countries. Its goal is to create functional and attractive cities and living environments by building homes, public and commercial buildings as well as infrastructure in a sustainable manner. YIT has been developing living environments for over a century and is constantly developing its way of working to meet and exceed the current criteria for environmental and economic efficiency.

Data is a strategic asset

The amount of data YIT has on all the aspects of construction business and industry is substantial. Managing and utilizing these data assets is essential for YIT to reach its strategic targets. By building a robust foundation of governance and technological capability for data assets, YIT can leverage advanced analytics and create new digital services to outpace the competition and serve both its own team as well as customers even better.

Construction crane

“Despite the fancy term 'master data', it is not a troublesome task – quite the contrary, it saves time.”

YIT’s Site Manager

Extensive co-operation from architecture to implementing technical solutions – always delivering value for business

For the past 6 years Solita has been guiding YIT in their path developing master data management and data governance capabilities. A major leap in these has been taken during the last 18 months, as the processes and technologies have been widely renewed. Solita has been involved in all chapters of the story, from identifying the enterprise requirements, forming the development and governance frameworks, designing the end-to-end processes, architectures, and governance structures all the way to implementing and maintaining the technical solutions in the cloud. Business value has been in the core and delivered from the start, widening the solution domain by domain.

In 2021 Solita was categorised as a strategic partner for YIT.

Involving relevant stakeholders in development early on

In the early stages of the latest development initiative, a comprehensive pre-study was carried out to understand business context and data dependencies of most business-critical data assets. This enabled YIT to involve correct stakeholders – such as Finance Experts, Project Managers, Site Managers, and business management – in future developments while making informed prioritisation in their data management roadmap and ensured a successful implementation phase.

For master data management, YIT selected the modern Semarchy xDM platform. Throughout the project, transparent and collaborative data management processes leveraging workflows built on Semarchy xDM platform have provided great user experiences for various user groups. Unnecessary work and miscommunication all around the organisation have reduced significantly and efficiency improvements have become obvious. Solution ensures availability of accurate, complete, and up-to-date data assets for various operative and analytical use cases.

“Keeping this crucial data e.g. on projects’ planned start, finish and warranty dates up to date is a great way to ensure that unnecessary delays or issues due to erroneous information don’t occur during the project. It also helps on practical level: for example, by making sure the purchase invoices are directed to the correct person on time. Despite the fancy term “master data”, it is not a troublesome task – quite the contrary, as it saves time both from myself and from my colleagues due to the decreasing need of having to ask questions to find out the facts”, states YIT’s Site Manager.

High-quality data helps make informed decisions

As YIT’s main business is mostly done in projects, the project data domain was an obvious choice to be included in the initiative. The new process empowers numerous users working with projects cross-functionally with trustworthy data. This benefits the whole organization from the construction sites all the way to the top management.

“When evaluating new investment and project possibilities, understanding the key figures and risk profile of our current project portfolio is crucial. Having the data always accurate and up to date, we’re constantly able to make informed decisions without a need of creating different ad hoc reports and analysis. This improves both the efficiency and quality of our decision making”, says Samuli Joki, SVP, Investments, Risk Management.

Closeup detail of a yellow construction crane

"Having the data always accurate and up to date improves both the efficiency and quality of our decision making."

Samuli Joki, SVP, Investments, Risk Management

All other main data domains – such as customers, suppliers, and employees – have been incorporated into the solution as well. For example, centralised management and distribution of juridical company structure has greatly streamlined the consumption of this information for all stakeholders, while proactively ensuring correctness of data in the process.

“Earlier in my work, I collected the necessary information from e.g. Finnish Trade Register, YIT’s public web sites, intranet and organisation charts. I asked for additional data also from our accounting and legal departments. After having all the necessary information at hand, I entered the data manually to Excel. Any typos or erroneous data from any source complicated and prolonged the process significantly. Now this kind of challenges have been solved”, YIT Treasury Expert says.

Data governance is essential

YIT understood early that a valuable data asset loses a lot of its value without a proper governance in place. Today most business-critical data assets have ownerships and development accountabilities in place that enable sustainable, business-driven development of data management. YIT is actively developing its data capabilities not only technologically, but also process-wise.

YIT’s Semarchy xDM platform is an enterprise multi domain solution – 13 data domains implemented to a single platform – hosted in Azure available to all YIT users. Efficient scaling, real-time integrations, as well as an audited high security setup ensures data is always both safe and available.

In the latest initiative the solution was in a crucial role providing new functionalities to several YIT experts & processes globally.

“In the big picture, these efforts have greatly increased awareness and transparency of YIT business, not to mention the improved decision-making capability trustworthy master data enables.“
Marjo Viinikka, YIT’s Service Area Manager of Common Platforms

The digital leap that took place during the past year has permanently improved the way knowledge workers are able to work. In the future the utilisation of data will become an even greater factor in YIT’s business and success, and Solita is proud to participate in the journey.