PONTUS NYSTRÖM, INTERNATIONAL BRAND EXPERT, WHAT BUILDS A GREAT BRAND?
Three things:
Differentiation. Why is our SUV different from their SUV? Why is our soda pop different from theirs? Our healthcare, better than the hospital down the street. Especially in an age with so much choice, where we’ve gotten so good at ironing out inefficiencies in the supply curve.
Innovation. The process of creating new, better stuff, quicker and more often than the next guy. What Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says is what the world rewards the most. I think AirFaas has come a long way with this in the procurement world.
Culture. The collection of beliefs, mindsets, etc., That allows both Number 1 and 2 to happen. Fix the culture, and a lot of Numbers 1. and 2. fall into place.
WHAT DO YOU THINK IS A BIG OBSTACLE IN ORGANIZATIONS?
The fear of fear!
Tension, that tinge of discomfort, even a pinch of panic, that moment of. “argh!”, is what we all dread, but it really is our friend.
It motivates us, gives us courage, and drives us toward our goals. The agony of change, the thing we all hate, is the grandmaster of creation.
And, it is a choice. We can hide. We can complain. We can be scared. But ultimately embracing uncertainty, dancing with the unknown, is what will drive us to a greater tomorrow.
AND HOW DO YOU COMMUNICATE A GREAT BRAND SO IT WILL SELL?
With emotions. And entertainment. This is what consumer brands understood decades ago, and Business to Business brands have still not understood. People are people regardless of where they work.
Emotions. Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman proved that decisions in B2B are taken emotionally, but then explained rationally. Every decision-maker is a human who doesn´t make decisions like a robot.
Entertainment. If you have bought the marketing space which allows you to enter someone’s home or office, you can´t scream at people and just pile up all your arguments. What is much more effective is to put a smile on your potential buyer’s face.
WHO WINS THE EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP IN FOOTBALL?
Italy. Spain plays like cowards, England looks anemic, Germany doesn´t have the passion. But look at the Italians when they were singing their national anthem before playing Belgium. The passion, they were like rock stars while the Belgians stood quiet or in best case mumbled a bit. Already before the match, you saw who was going to win.
HELLO GRETA GRUDZINSKAITE FROM VILNIUS, YOU ARE THE NEW COO OF COMBI WORKS. WHAT IS YOUR BUSINESS?
Reaching and ensuring operational excellence, handling administrative and day-to-day work, leading and managing Manufacturing Services segment.
WHAT ARE COMBI WORKS BIGGEST ADVANTAGES?
That Combi Works is making manufacturing easy 
I would say that one of the biggest advantages is “One supplier” or “One-stop shop”. Of course, building a back-up for every project that we have in case of emergency. Scalable manufacturing network, competitiveness, technical capabilities, visibility, and traceability.
WHAT ARE YOUR BIGGEST CHALLENGES?
I want to point out that I love challenges. But currently, the biggest challenge is internal processes. Improve project management, RFQ process, OTD, and quality accuracy. And I can say that AirFaas is playing the main role in solving the issues that we have.
WHAT DO YOU GET FROM THE COOPERATION WITH AIRFAAS?
Everything that is needed to run the business. From daily work to management reporting overview. Task and order management, procurement, project management, OTD and quality follow-up, segment and personal KPI follow-up, categorization, weekly/monthly/yearly reporting, and many more. AirFaas is the main solution for Combi Works.
TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF AS A PERSON, OUTSIDE THE PROFESSIONAL LIFE?
Much more fun, not that much into rules as I am at work 
But if I’m being serious, sport is a big part of my life. I enjoy reading, traveling, spending time with friends. I am quite an ambitious person and focusing on my career, learnings, and gathering experience.
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT “THE OTHER GRETA”?
That she is a lucky person.
HOW WILL IT GO IN THE EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP IN FOOTBALL, AND DO YOU CARE AT ALL?
In general, I love different kinds of sports. Basketball (the absolute favorite), ice hockey, football, MMA – these are only a few that I can mention. I’m very happy to see Finland playing in European Championship and can say that it’s already an achievement and I wish you all the best of luck
We’re pleased to announce that the June update of AirFaas is live! You can read an in-depth list of the new features, improvements, and fixes here.
New Features
Airfaas calculates and shows sales availability in order entry by warehouse quantity.
Qarma integration MVP implementation.
Feature Improvements
Product management – Enhanced importing of new parts to your database and
updating of existing parts. The BOM generator supports more types and varieties of
data and makes importing, categorizing and organizing data more efficient.
Order line numbers in orders, and order PDFs, etc. follow industry standard.
Buy to order enhancement. Recive a supplier PO and automaticaly ship the same
lines to connected SO – PO auto-receipt function and the ability to ship the
connected SO lines.
Auto-Close PO/SO after all lines Received/Shipped.
RFQ product management – Auto-add new products into database after a quotation
is created.
Order form line entry has been renewed for easier use – Excel features deactivated
and Jexcel/Extender input removed
Fixes
Company selector bug in mobile devices.
Project specification functionality fix in Copy – Project page does not respect global
js/css version.
Price list – Supplier price list export is not active.
Currencies separation added into all reports and list view grids.
Delivery addresses in AF.
JUUSO JANKAMA, YOU ARE THE NEW CEO OF AIRFAAS, HOW DOES THAT FEEL?
It feels really good! We have a great team and a product that has a lot of potential. You get chance of being part of something this extraordinary once in a lifetime, so I am really enjoying the job.
WHAT IS AIRFAAS?
AirFaas is a procurement solution that has the potential of reshaping the way manufacturing companies buy and manage their spend.
WHAT´S YOUR PRIMARY AMBITION FOR THE NEXT YEAR?
Growth, it’s as simple as that. Our ambition is to expand our customer base and get our business to the next level.
BIGGEST CHALLENGE?
Growth 
We are still a young and relatively unknown company. Once we get into a proper discussion with potential customers, we can quickly impress people and showcase very concretely how AirFaas can help them to buy better. The challenge sometimes is to get to those conversations and convince the people that talking to us for an hour could save them an infinite number of hours later on.
WHAT´S SO SPECIAL ABOUT AIRFAAS?
Many things! What I think makes us unique is that AirFaas was built to solve a specific real-life problem in procurement and we do it really well. That’s because we really understand the specific demands of our customer segments because our team has lived that life. Our solution tackles the biggest challenges and handles them efficiently and elegantly. Most procurement solutions out there are polar opposites: they solve generic high-level problems with a ton of functionality that doesn’t really matter.
IS TECHNICAL PROCUREMENT AS IT IS TODAY, UP TO DATE?
Yes and no. People who work in technical procurement are some of the smartest in the business when it comes to understanding what procurement can really do for your business. At the same time, the manual solutions they are forced to use make it really hard for them to thrive.
WHO ARE YOU? FAMILY, HOBBIES?
I am a middle-aged man with a wife and a cat. I love sports and spend a lot of my free time playing tennis, riding a bike and skiing. When I’m not doing those things, I enjoy music, reading, solving puzzles, and hanging out with my friends.
WHERE WILL FINLAND END UP IN THE EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP IN FOOTBALL?
My heart says they will win the whole thing. My head says that playing more than 3 games would be a huge success story.
Over the last few weeks, the AirFaas team has spent a lot of time talking to procurement and purchasing professionals from variety of companies, from all sizes and flavors of manufacturing. These have been really interesting discussions and have given us valuable insight into what buyers really want from their tools. I thought it would be interesting to all the readers of AirFaas blog as well, so here are some of the results of “What Do Buyers Want?”.
One of the biggest findings was that companies don’t really have any solutions for managing purchasing. Bigger companies have some solutions, but the way they have been either designed or implemented leave big pockets of transactions and suppliers uncovered. The lack of tools leads into three major problems:
These issues were troubling 86% of the companies we talked to. What is really interesting is that we didn’t talk to any companies that would have had “some” issue with procurement. The answers were binary: either no issues whatsoever, or lots of problems. This binary division revealed another interesting thing: A company’s position in the value chain has a major impact on their procurement operation. Businesses who do simpler, less value adding activities like machining, stamping, or welding, have less procurement related issues than companies that manufacture and deliver complex, more value-added solutions like machine building.
This difference is interesting but not surprising: Less value adding operations tend to be more repetitive, and the material flows tend to be “one-to-many”. Meaning that the same raw material is used to produce many end-products by addition of work and machining. This means that purchasing is straightforward and transactional. In more complex operations the flow is many-to-one, and the number of purchased material and components can be a thousand times more. This makes procurement the heart of operations and delivery capability, and the nature of purchasing more strategic and less transactional.
There is also a difference between companies who deliver more value-added products. Companies who sell standard products and have more serial production, suffered mostly from lack of data and insights, manual work and challenges of managing their suppliers. Companies who sell customized and tailored products suffered most with manual and laborious RFQ processes, and the issues with data and insights came only second. Again, this is interesting but not surprising: The more repetitive the purchasing is, the more focus is on optimizing and steering the flow of purchased materials. Conversely, the more unique the purchased items are, the more there needs to be focus on the sourcing and contracting of the goods.
So, what does this all mean? First of all, kudos to the purchasing people working in manufacturing. It is really difficult to cut trees with a table knife, and figuratively speaking that is exactly what these individuals are doing. Still, they manage to cut down the trees they need, despite the subpar tools. Second, these insights give us at AirFaas a lot of confidence that we are solving a problem that causes daily pain to numerous hard-working professionals globally. Knowing that we can help people to do their work better and help businesses thrive, gives us a great sense of purpose!
We’re pleased to announce that the may update of AirFaas is live! You can read an in-depth list of the new features, improvements, and fixes here.
New Features
Shipped header and line KPI reporting added into reporting page
Added ability to compare Quotation made to customer in Projects
Invoice types added to AirFaas; Pro-forma, Shipment based and Credit Invoice
Ability to comment internally RFQ win/loss comment
Company Setup: Company certification document upload and download added
See SO: Ship by date/PO: Due date Orders in company CALENDAR with links to ORDER
Feature Improvements
Data Group automation
Project log enhanced with closing transaction log and also seen in reporting
Nonconformity reporting – Category separation in KPI reporting; Observation, Minor, Mayor added
Customer and supplier page in reporting improvements
Filters added to Shipment main page
Rev Default choosing enabled on Product page – Visible default rev in order entry
Fixes
Delivery accuracy minor fix to show correct % in reporting
Shipment Invoice – Ship to Address follows from shipment to invoice
Specification copy in project – Copy function fixed
Invoice PDF shows only existing lines. Not deleted lines
Quote based SO will show only current lines in shipment even if order is modified
We use the phrase “it’s not rocket science” a lot at AirFaas. But then again, for a rocket scientist, or at least companies that build rockets, they probably do a lot of procurement-related tasks and admin that isn’t exactly rocket science either. So, let’s imagine for a second that we are all indeed rocket scientists, building complex machines and needing to request the materials or parts from other such experts. To do this we would likely need to send a request for quotation, or RFQ.
The purpose of this post isn’t to compile a list of do’s and don’ts – though I do love a good list! The point is to offer my own take on the topic. In general, wise minds agree, that a good RFQ is a document, or a series of documents, that get the attention (and offers) from high-quality vendors that meet predetermined criteria. It needs to be compiled of an exact array of information that you can easily find from multiple sources online.
Is this a good explanation of a good RFQ then? I don’t think that simply ticking all the boxes, or filling out a template with high-quality information and supporting documents is enough. A good RFQ should offer more than just being a document or series of documents that convey accurate data. This data, both sent and received, has great value even after the tender decision has been approved!
I think that a good RFQ should support the decision-making process in a wider context. It should act now, and in the future, as defined justification for the processes that follow – one of the first in a sequence of events. It can also act as a useful step in finding, selecting, and approving new suppliers, and managing the following relationship.
A RFQ should also be accessible, securely stored, and linked to the rest of a project all the way to the point where a nonconformity has been reported. Even after the validity date of a RFQ has passed the data it represents is still valid and shouldn’t be disregarded. Your project data does not have a shelf life, nor does the justification for your decision-making process.
Working with RFQs in a way that connects to other parts of your business seems like a no-brainer to me, but most procurement people don’t have the option of an integrated system that links strategic to operational data. Procurement data, more often than not, is created in files with templates and archived to a cloud location. To summarize, a RFQ should be a well define document, but more importantly, it should be linked to the business flows that precede and succeed it. It should, along with the quotations it generates, be stored, easily accessed, and linked to the project as a whole. This is because it both serves as justification in the decision-making process and acts as the first point of contact with new and old suppliers alike. So maybe it’s not rocket science, but then again what is?
It takes a while, but in life and in business you sooner or later realize what you are really good at. And how to go on with that experience as your biggest asset.
At AirFaas we have dedicated a lot of time to find out what we are really good at. We have benchmarked our services, we have asked our customers about their experiences and we have turned every stone on the path leading to where we are now.
Technical Procurement.
After launching the new website one of the questions that has been asked is “why focus so strongly on procurement”? People familiar with the AirFaas solution know that from a capability standpoint we can do many other things too.
AirFaas for Sellers helps companies to manage their sales side data and interact with their customers digitally. AirFaas works as a market place and we have companies sharing their sales catalogs there. AirFaas also supports supply chain visibility and manages stock.
So why focus so strongly on just one side of AirFaas?
We chose to focus on Procurement because we believe that is where we can provide the most value to our customers. We know for a fact, that getting spend under control is still a struggle for many manufacturing companies. We know there are no good solutions for managing technical procurement, and the ones that exist, are extremely expensive and accessible only to the largest corporations.
This is why key parts of procurement are done manually with excels, PowerPoints, email and a variety of file storage systems even in the biggest companies. AirFaas has tools for improving all aspects of procurement and the barriers to entry are low – our solution is both cost-efficient and is easy to implement.
This puts us in a position to help more companies get access to cutting-edge digital procurement capabilities than ever before.
We didn’t get rid of all the things that AirFaas has been capable of doing before. It is all still there. We are just framing what we do differently. And the things we don’t talk about so strongly are added value that help us to stand out from the other vendors.
We’re excited about setting off on our new journey and welcome you all along for the ride!
Today you might have noticed something was a little different. Maybe you couldn’t quite put your finger on it, but you were working away, and you had the feeling that something had changed. You were right! Over the weekend the AirFaas development team has been working around the clock to update the system and launch a whole host of new features. A detailed breakdown can be found here.
In the SaaS industry success and failure are defined by whether your product creates value for its users. That’s why we think one of our most important jobs is to actively listen to the feedback we receive on a daily basis from our users. All requests, no matter how big, small, or sometimes a little crazy, are heard and fed to the hungry AirFaas developers.
The whole AirFaas team meets once a week and spends time discussing user feedback and how it fits into our long-term development plan. The discussion involves sales, customer success, management, head of product, and developers, defining the scope, timeframe, use cases, and how it will create value for the entirety of our users. We discuss scaling or limiting features, and as a startup, analyze the cost-benefit relationship to explore viability, and finally, if all is well, we might even form a consensus!
We have a goal to release 1 update every month from now on to deliver the high-level value that we think our users deserve. Today marks the release of the first in this series of updates: Version 21.4.0.0! Updates will be a mix of new features – designed to make your job even more efficient, feature improvements – to ensure that processes are as lean as possible, and fixes – where code gremlins need to be tamed!
Today you will notice major changes in the way that you can communicate inside AirFaas with partners who are also on the platform. Our vision for AirFaas is an ecosystem of interconnected digitalized manufactures, with world-class tools, who can complete buying and selling in the most efficient way possible. That’s why we have launched the Groups feature where you can securely connect to partners inside AirFaas and create cross-company tasks.
We want to limit the need for tools such as email and phone and allow you to centralize all project data on AirFaas. Now you can create a task for a partner in your defined group – allowing you to stay inside AirFaas, rather than switching to another tool to communicate or create a task. Maybe you need your supplier to reply to a RFQ by the end of business today or want a custom to update a purchase order. Now you can communicate this information between companies inside AirFaas!
For those of you working with complex products in industrial manufacturing, you will love the new product categorization, BOM management, and BOM generator features. Now you can define product categories based on your own exact criteria. You can ship BOMs and ensure that the component parts are reduced from your warehouse, and you can create and modify BOMs effortlessly with the new BOM generator! All of this reduces the need to work manually in Excel and reduces the chance of human error.
We’re committed to listening to our users and helping them to become more efficient in technical procurement. Our vision is an ecosystem of digitalized manufacturing professionals who all have world-class tools to do their jobs as simply as possible. If you want to learn more about the new features, or just want to get in touch to discuss AirFaas I’m listening. You never know the next crazy idea might be the best of them all!
Hello! This is my first blog as the new CEO of AirFaas. It is also the first blog post on the newly updated AirFaas Website. So Welcome! I want to use this opportunity to talk about the changes we have made with AirFaas.
“Pushing the envelope” is the American fighter pilots way of explaining how to get the very most out of their airplanes, to exceed the expectations of their material. And you can actually say that this is what we have done also with AirFaas. We have checked out all the angles of AirFaas “envelope” to find out how to get the most value out of it for our customers.
Where you meet this change primarily is the updated AirFaas Website! Visitors who have been here before will notice that the visual aspects of AirFaas are the same, but the message is different. You may notice that we are introducing AirFaas as Technical Procurement solution and at the same time we have moved focus away from Factory As a Service and the industrial marketplace.
There are a couple reasons behind the change in our message. We have listened to market feedback which said that it is difficult to understand what AirFaas is and what benefits it brings. This was a fair point of view! We admit that our message was too idealistic, abstract, and it focused too much on our long-term vision. By looking to the future we missed the here and now, and forgot to tell about the immediate benefits that AirFaas provides to our customers: the high quality tools for managing technical procurement and sales end-to-end, from initiating and responding to RFQ’s all the way to collaborative nonconformity management process.
With these things in mind we decided to improve the AirFaas website to be simple, descriptive, and focus on the concrete capabilities and benefits we provide. We removed a lot of content that we felt was outdated or unclear. We added content that is to the point and easy to figure out, just like AirFaas tools are. The outcome to us is exactly what we hoped for: a simple and informative site that builds on the strong AirFaas brand.
Even though our message is now more focused on AirFaas tools and the benefits they provide, we have not forgotten or abandoned our long-term vision of connecting available industrial capacity with companies needing it. We believe that digitalization will allow companies to utilize existing production capacity rather than always investing in their own capacity. This will significantly improve asset utilization, ROI and competitiveness of industrial clusters and ecosystems. But to get there we need to make sure that all the players within those clusters have proper tools for digitally managing their operations.
The reality is that too many businesses lack the capability to handle business transactions digitally. Therefore, the first step for AirFaas is to help these businesses get access to great digital tools. The second step is to connect these businesses digitally. After which we will get to our final destination – a digitally connected network of factories that can sell their capacity to buyers as a service.
In the context of this long journey updating the website was a baby step, but still an important one. There are a ton of businesses out there struggling with old ways of working and not being able to enjoy the benefits of proper digital tools. We want to help these businesses take their first step on their digital journey. Telling our story in a simple, concise way helps us help our customers.
Juuso Jankama, CEO AirFaas