On the sixth of November, the Eziil team had the great honor of hosting special guests in our Viljandi office. The President of the Republic of Estonia, Kersti Kaljulaid, arrived on the last day of the three-day county visit and got acquainted with our activities.
The meeting began with a tour of the Eziil office. Maido Janke, CEO of Eziil, told the guests how we have used local materials to design our work environment. As an example, Maido brought to the attention wooden lamp domes above the desks, which have been created by trees grown in the castle hills by a local master from Viljandi.
After getting acquainted with the work environment, Maido told the guests how the idea of Eziil was born. He shared the ways of thinking that have helped lead us to where we are today and what our future plans are.
As much of the local materials as possible have been used to furnish the Eziil office. In the photo, Eziil’s CEO Maido Janke introduces the president to lamp domes that have been created by trees grown in the castle hills by a local master from Viljandi.
Photo: Office of the President of the Republic of Estonia
Current state of digitization in Estonia
Together we discussed the current state of digitalisation in the Estonian industry. Kaljulaid found that the Estonian private sector is still at the beginning of the journey in terms of digitization and utilising existing opportunities.
Based on Eziil’s experience, Maido said that there are innovators in the manufacturing sector who apply new technologies and, figuratively speaking, run ahead of others. On the other side are companies that do not want to change. They are faced with a tough choice – to adapt or die out.
The President added to Maido’s example that extinction is a natural part of entrepreneurship. According to her, it is not possible to endlessly develop using the same old technology.
The challenges of digitization
We also discussed the challenges of digitizing production. Maido emphasized that when starting to digitize, it is important to move in small steps and understand that not everything can be done at once. Unfortunately, it is all too often seen that too much is being done at once, resulting in talk of how digitization does not work when running into problems. We need to first start by changing our mindset.
President Kersti Kaljulaid brought the E-state for comparison. She considered that, similarly to the digitisation of production, it is important to start by analyzing processes when digitizing public services. Otherwise, the system will be digitized with all its bottlenecks.
Eziil’s strength is a team with a production background
The Eziil team felt that the President was impressed that most of the team members had a real production background and shared some interesting stories to confirm it. This fact raised a question in the President’s entourage – how many companies in Estonia involved in production software have that many people with production background?
We can proudly say that Eziil is at the forefront in this regard. We have the most team members who can speak from experience about what problems the Eziil software could have solved in their lives if they were still working in production.
Which garden and forest products are related to the development of a startup company?
We value a clean living environment and healthy lifestyles within the team. Inspired by this, we put together a basket of garden and forest products collected by team members for the President. Everything added to the basket had its own story to tell, and some products told their story about life in a startup company:
Garlic represents the bitterness that developing a business can cause if you always compare where you are with where you want to be. Onions can make us cry, just as the journey towards great goals sometimes does. Eel liver syrup helps fight headaches caused by all that thinking.
Blackberry jam represents the great goal we want to reach. Many know what steps need to be taken to make blackberry jam, but few are willing to see the journey through from start to finish.
The Eziil team thanks the president and her staff for an exciting meeting!
