Managed visitor flow in the heart of Helsinki’s busiest district
Sanoma Oyj is Finland’s largest media group and the second-largest media company in the Nordics. Its core operations are based at Sanomatalo, in the middle of the busiest part of Helsinki. The building houses, among others, Sanoma Media Finland’s editorial offices and radio channels. Customers, partners, media guests, and other visitors pass in and out every day.
According to Security Manager Jaakko Heinilä, it’s important for Sanoma to know reliably who is visiting the premises and to manage guest access. But security isn’t the only consideration — smoothness, and the good customer experience it brings, matters just as much. Systam Visit helps Sanoma deliver on both, and the partnership has continued since 2019.
Visitor management supporting the reception team
Whether guests are invited in advance or arrive unannounced, they’re welcomed at Sanomatalo by a friendly reception team and sleek Systam Table X self-service kiosks. In addition to Sanoma, other tenants in the building have also been connected to the visitor management service.
Invited guests receive a pre-arrival message ahead of time with meeting details, arrival instructions, and a code for quick sign-in. Visitor information is stored securely in the cloud, and once signed in, the kiosk or reception prints a visitor badge. At the same time, the system automatically notifies the host that their guest has arrived, so they can be collected quickly from the lobby and taken onward to restricted areas.
Sanomatalo’s reception staff are also happy with the service. The browser-based tool makes front-desk tasks easy, and the automated steps have clearly lightened the workload — leaving more time for what really makes an impression: an excellent customer experience.
Less system anxiety
According to Heinilä, Systam Visit has stood out from other solutions. The service has worked smoothly and reliably, whereas many other systems have brought their share of dysfunction — something Heinilä jokingly calls “system anxiety”. System anxiety is the invisible thief of the workday: it happens when people have to spend their time just coping with systems instead of focusing on the work those systems were meant to support in the first place.
With experience across numerous systems as a security manager, Heinilä notes that with Systam, time isn’t spent on constant troubleshooting.
“There have been challenges with quite a few other systems. Systam, on the other hand, has worked reliably, is easy to maintain, and has saved me from system anxiety.”
Minor bugs are part of the territory with any system, but Heinilä says speed is what matters: once an issue is reported, it gets resolved quickly by support.
Growing visitor numbers call for a managed process
The visitor data from the service has been a big help for Sanoma in understanding how and when people visit. Visitor numbers at Sanomatalo have grown sharply since 2021 — up 30% last year and already 25% in the first half of this year. Monthly visitor volume is now around a thousand guests. Yet this growth hasn’t become a problem, since a managed, data-driven process keeps visits running just as smoothly regardless of volume.
Visits are increasingly concentrated in the morning: 40–50% of meetings take place before 10 a.m. That makes streamlining morning rush hours — and the help self-service provides — even more important going forward. Visitor data also helps with right-sizing staffing at the right time and place.
A partnership that feels personal
For Sanoma, how the collaboration with Systam works has mattered a great deal. Heinilä highlights in particular the proactive approach and the regular follow-up meetings that ensure things keep moving and that the account is well looked after.
“It’s great that the collaboration feels personal, and that you get to know your account manager or support contact — a bit like a family doctor. Nothing gets left hanging; the customer is taken seriously, and a real effort is made to find a solution.”
Systam’s Chief Commercial Officer Antti-Pekka Raitisto says the collaboration with Sanoma has been long-term and productive. Over the past year, the two companies have worked together to support the renovation of Sanomatalo’s lobby, the onboarding of new tenants, and the management of growing visitor numbers.
“I want to thank Jaakko and the whole Sanoma team for great collaboration. It’s been a pleasure developing the service together with a customer who understands the many dimensions of value in visitor management — the potential of a smooth visitor experience, security, and automation to ease reception staff’s day-to-day work. The service we’ve optimized together means a large share of guests can sign in with their personal code in under ten seconds. When that saves more than two minutes per visitor compared to manual sign-in, the impact shows up clearly both in the visitor experience and in how smoothly reception staff can work.”
—Antti-Pekka Raitisto, Chief Commercial Officer, Systam
