“One of the best things about my work and the company culture is that we have our feet on the ground but we’re always reaching for the skies. The enthusiasm for working towards a better world through what we do is infectious,” she says.
Banking on the forest
Like many other Finns, the forest and nature play a big part in Anu’s personal and professional life. Walking or hiking, adventures on water, and horse riding are favourite activities to top up her batteries when she isn’t hard at work gathering and interpreting information that informs high-level corporate decision making.
“I have always loved reading and libraries, so at commercial college I took library science and informatics. After graduating I knew I wanted to get into higher education and have a career where I could travel and maybe market Finland abroad. While reading through the long list of degree-course options I stumbled across a course in forest economics and marketing,” Anu says.
While studying, her professor emphasised how important it was to have a speciality, and hers was of course informatics. After finishing her thesis Anu took her first steps on what was to become a long career journey with a position as Global Forest Industry Analyst at Citibank’s Helsinki office.
Anu had always harboured a desire to put her skills to use in a forest industry company, and a chance encounter at a seminar presented her with the opportunity she had been looking for.
One of the speakers, who happened to be from Metsä Board, casually mentioned at the end of his talk that they were looking for a market analyst, so of course I applied immediately!
A keen eye on the operating environment
As Market Intelligence Manager, in a nutshell Anu’s job is to keep a close eye on everything that is happening in Metsä Board’s operating environment. The information and insights she gathers on megatrends, consumer trends, competitors and regulatory developments play a critical role in decision-making across virtually every business function. “I’m monitoring and interpreting everything that is happening outside Metsä Board that could affect us and helping the business to make smarter decisions based on reasoned data and insights,” she explains.
Although her role sits within Metsä Board’s R&D organisation, it is not limited to supporting that function alone. The information she gathers is used to support corporate management in making strategic investment decisions and fine-tuning group-level strategies and scenarios. She is also a valuable resource for functions like communications, investor relations and sales and marketing too.
A home from home
Despite over two decades in the market intelligence business, Anu’s passion for her work – and for learning and personal development – still burn brightly. “Although from the outside it might seem that I’ve been doing the same thing for a long time, that’s simply not the case,” she says. “My role has changed within the business, and I’m supporting decision-making at all levels of the company. The variety in terms of the topics I focus on and the functions I work with is what keeps me motivated,” she continues.
One of the best reflections on the working culture at Metsä Board is the fact that people tend to stay with the company for a long time, says Anu:
People tend to have long careers here, and even if they do leave many end up coming back. It feels like a home from home, and I think the company’s commitment to personal development has a lot to do with that.
The diversity of opportunities on offer at Metsä Board has Anu excited for the future: “I’m still very satisfied with where I am, but I’ve often thought that project management is one area that would really interest me should I decide to change roles. There are plenty of opportunities to do something different within Metsä Group: we have Metsä Tissue, Metsä Wood, Metsä Forest and Metsä Fibre as well as our innovation company Metsä Spring, which is doing very interesting work in developing new business related to wood-based value chains. These are all very different businesses. Who knows what tomorrow will bring!”