Esa Lahtinen and Jarkko Ruuskanen, the CEO and CTO of Nordic TeleCom, spent over 10 years designing and developing modern datacenter facilities, building networks, and setting up telephone systems for businesses of all sizes. But in 2009 they set out on their own to create Nordic Telecom, a cloud-based communication technologies company that provides a number of services for companies with call centers.
They noticed that during the economic downturn companies didn’t want to invest in physical hardware or be locked into fixed software licenses. So rather than taking that approach, Nordic TeleCom offers a more flexible solution. It’s worked out for them; since they launched their suite of products a year ago, they haven’t lost a single customer.
The company is experiencing a nice growth rate. In the last 10 months the company has acquired over 200 customers, and still hasn’t raised any public or private funding. The company tells us the last fiscal period (up to 6/2012) showed a turnover of €400k. “With the current growth rate we are aiming at least €2M revenues during this fiscal period,” says Pietari Päivänen, Partner and Director of International Business.
Their customers include international corporations with Finnish subsidies, such at Sixt, Harley Davidson, and Diacor. Perhaps their main product is a PBX (an office or call center telephone exchange) solution that provides comprehensive call center services. Rather than making their customers make an either/or choice, Nordic Telecom’s services can also plug into existing telecom systems, and provide value added service on top of it, such as detailed statistics.
Nordic TeleCom also offers an innovative call management service that helps call centers manage rush hours. If a customer calls and there is a long expected wait, the service will alert the customer of this fact, and then let them know that their number has been recorded and a representative will call them right back. For customers, this saves the annoyance of having to have the phone up to your ear for 20 minutes. And for a company with many competitors, like their experience with Sixt rental car, it can help increase sales by keeping the customer engaged, rather than having them hang up and call up a competing company.
Nordic TeleCom has now launched in the UK as part of their first steps for international expansion. The company is also targeting Scandinavia and Eastern Europe as initial targets.
