Digital services to assist customers developed

In 2024, the development of our digital services was guided by three key themes:

• Development of services that are easy to use
• Provision of an excellent digital service experience
• Improvement of internal efficiency

The common denominators for these themes were bold experimentation and the use of AI. Through these measures, we aimed to support the targets set out in our strategy and ensure that our customers received the best possible service.

Hansel has been using various AI solutions quite extensively for several years now for analytics purposes, for example. In 2024, expectations focused on the new opportunities offered by generative AI in particular. In addition to striving to provide modern tools and new capabilities for our employees, we have introduced new targeted services for our customers.

The first in production was the AI assistant Hankintavälkky, which was launched in the Hilma service (hankintailmoitukset.fi). At least unofficially, it also seemed to be the first service based on generative AI to go into production in the Finnish public sector. The purpose of the AI assistant is to help public procurement specialists with procurement-related issues. Hankintavälkky also supports Hilma’s vision by providing easy-to-use information services related to public procurement. In 2024, Hilma was a service owned by the Ministry of Finance and developed and maintained by Hansel.

After the August launch during the rest of the year, Hankintavälkky had an average of 700 discussions per month with users, and user feedback was generally highly positive. Based on the discussions and user experiences, the Hilma steering group decided to expand Hankintavälkky’s information content to other topics of interest for the users. At the initial stage, Hankintavälkky only utilised the content of the public procurement handbook, which was used to teach AI. It is likely that Hankintavälkky will reduce future pressure on Hilma’s customer service and the Public Procurement Advisory Unit.

Easier procurement

One of the key themes in Hansel’s strategy is the convenience of joint procurement. Relating to our ambition of providing an excellent digital service experience, we have given a lot of thought to how we could support our customers in simplified tendering procedures within joint procurement procedures. In 2024, we built a concept for tendering based on the e-commerce principle under the working name kilpailutuskori (“tendering basket”). The plan is to use the new concept to introduce pre-defined product and service options in Hansel’s tendering tool Kisa-apuri (Competition Assistant), which the customers can easily add to their own tendering basket. This will make it easier to define the procurement object and reduce the tenderer’s workload, as separate Excel spreadsheets will no longer be necessary.

The plan is to introduce the tendering basket in early 2025 in two of the dynamic purchasing systems (DPSs): Computers 2023–2027 and Laboratory supplies, chemicals and equipment 2023–2027. We will gather experiences from the tendering basket and expand it to other aspects of joint procurement at a later point of time.

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