The motto of Cloud Nine is “digital experiences, made together”. With that they want to establish a deep and trustful connection with all their clients in order to build long-term sustainable plans for their digital presence. By combining smart technology with design and user experience they create value for both their clients and the end users. With a team based in Helsinki, Stockholm and Gdansk, they have a strong presence in the Nordics. In this article we meet Mikael Östling, Senior Key Account Manager at Cloud Nine. 

What is Cloud Nine’s mission for the upcoming years in Finland and the Nordics?

We want to grow our agency and we want to find more business cases locally in Finland as we currently see bolder thinking from our clients in Sweden. There we see brands that think and act digital on a global scale from day one and therefore achieve amazing growth. In Finland however, many brands are more conservative when it comes to digital opportunities. We want to change this.

How would you describe the current state of your industry?

Fast-evolving and highly competitive. We are also fighting for the same talent, designers and developers as pure product companies, meaning huge demand and higher salaries. This is a great challenge for us. It’s also the reason why we have opened a new office in Gdansk, Poland. 

What’s the biggest impact you have seen on both your customers and the industry you work in?

Platforms and headless architecture. When I started in the business, almost everything was custom built from ground up. Nowadays, we choose among best-of-breed platforms and are able to build sophisticated, custom solutions in record-breaking time. And we can focus much more on orchestrating the user experience, rather than writing code.

How did the pandemic affect your company?

We have actually seen a rise in productivity as a result of the flexibility resulting from working remotely; and since we work a lot with e-commerce we have been really busy. 

You have a webinar series coming up – can you tell us more about it?

These first 4 webinars are about sharing insights about what we think is the future of e-commerce.  We have handpicked some of our best experts and partners to share their thoughts on how to build a modern e-commerce, ready for global competition. We believe anyone running some kind of e-commerce business should find these sessions inspiring. We will run them simultaneously in Finland and Sweden which we hope will spark innovation and new opportunities.

Learn more about the webinar, and save your spot here.

Why do you see it is important to be a part of a community like Epicenter?

First of all Epicenter Helsinki provides us with a fantastic location, flexible office space and top-notch meeting facilities. It also provides us with an excellent networking hub, as we continue to grow our brand and business in Finland.