CFO focus Elevating people
From ice skate blades to now developing elevators, Kone’s product range has embodied evolution. Across more than a century, the Finnish giant has prided itself on meeting the challenges of an ever-changing world. And, as Ilkka Hara, the company’s CFO, explains, this dedication to the future remains ferocious. Andy Tunnicliffe catches up with Hara to learn about Kone’s digital transition – and the fundamental role people are playing in it.
ith a deep and storied culture at its heart, Kone is a vast business with even greater ambitions – among them to improve the flow of urban life. Starting life in a nondescript Helsinki machine repair shop in 1910 – Kone means ‘machine’ in Finnish – it has grown to be a global transportation giant, building everything from automated walkways to lifts, ready to face an increasingly populated urban space. “We’ve expanded to having our own operations in 60 countries, and partners in more than that,” says Ilkka Hara, the company’s CFO for more than six years. True enough: Kone does business the world over, and boasts over 65,000 employees. Even more impressive, the company moves more than a billion people each day primarily via its elevators, escalators, and also automatic building doors and other people flow solutions. That focus on the here and now is consistent with Kone’s philosophy more broadly. “What is important is that we have a very mission- driven business,” Hara explains. “We want to improve the flow of urban life. We bring value to our customers by understanding their needs in an urbanising world. Our vision is to create the best people flow experience throughout the full lifecycle of a building.”
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‘People flow’ is a term you’ll hear Kone use a lot. In fact, it even has an arm of the business dedicated to the concept. The principle stems from using real data, collected from sensors, to understand how buildings and other environments are being used. New projects – such as an office block – can then be simulated to predict how they might be used in the future. Things such as traffic flow, where bottlenecks might be, and how users might interact with their environment, can all be
Finance Director Europe /
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KONE
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