Tikkurila’s digital transformation with eLindström 

Tikkurila is a leading Nordic paint company with operations in 11 countries. Since June 2021, Tikkurila has been part of global PPG Industries. Tikkurila manufactures paints and coatings from carefully chosen raw materials that meet the highest quality standards.  

Lindström has been serving Tikkurila for over ten years for their workwear needs. Here is their story of digital transformation from the textile management processes space. 

We were in conversation with Jari Junnikkala, Industrial Safety Technician, and Outi Meckelborg, HSE Manager from Tikkurila, to understand their journey of digitalizing workwear management with our customer portal eLindström. 

Tikkurila transitioned to eLindström in 2018 and the platform is being actively used since then. Jari and Outi feel that the online service has brought many benefits for them in their everyday life at work. eLindström makes placing textile orders extremely easy and flexible. The online portal also supports communication and information flow in a transparent fashion. “You can see everything at a glance”, shares Jari. 

 Life before eLindström 

If they think about their life before eLindström, it was full of excel sheets. They want to especially remember the turbulent summer times when there was an order spike to provide workwear for summer employees. All the information was filled in on one mighty excel sheet. This arrangement meant that there was always a possibility of filling in the wrong items or sizes for the user. To add to the misery, the excel file was shuttled repeatedly every time a new order was placed, or an order was modified. 

This practice clearly took unnecessary time and effort on the part of the customer and Lindström. The customer also did not receive any confirmation of the order.  

 No more lost trousers – eLindström to the rescue 

It is exciting to hear that textile management is now much easier than it used to be back in the day at Tikkurila. Outi remembers when they were still looking for lost garments during long inventory days together with Lindström. Now the situation has turned around and how! The digital platform makes it possible to monitor the workwear on personnel level when needed and track how many garments are in use or in the laundry. The end-to-end automated view magnifies visibility and makes it very easy to trust the system. 

Outi has experienced many kinds of customer portals, and the feeling usually has not been all positive. “eLindström is an exception and a platform which I can trust that it really works”, she says. She adds that she finds it very useful that it is so easy to see the history of actions, what has happened, and when.   

What facilitates flexibility is that if Jari is on his vacation, it is pretty straightforward to share access with Outi or another colleague to monitor needed things. They have said goodbyes to post-it notes that always went missing mysteriously. Jari also feels delighted that a platform can actually make a cooperation with a service provider more flexible. It gives an experience that is almost like the feeling of operating in e-commerce, where you have many more features than only buying.   

Digitalisation saves the day 

eLindström has turned the tables on the archaic process and commenced a transformation that has addressed the customers’ pain points in more than one way. All textile-related actions can be handled and tracked in one place, and effective communication is almost guaranteed, not forgetting the flexibility to tend to matter at your own time. 

Adopting eLindström does not mean that Tikkurila would not need a human to look after their service. There are still times that somebody needs, for example, customized clothes, and then they need to have a person who is responsible for taking care of such orders. eLindström provides support and easiness for the responsible personnel and all other users who may benefit from interacting with the management system. You can now just open eLindström and trust to have a full view of the workwear management.