Digia and Avalon join forces

Press release 20 September 2022 at 9.15 a.m.

Digia continues purposefully implementing its strategy and acquires Avalon, a company focused on digital marketing and customer experience development. Avalon’s understanding of the development of a data-based real-time customer experience and the management of that development, combined with Digia’s well-known business and design consulting expertise, strengthen Digia’s role in the market as a pioneering supplier of broader data- and analytics-based digital service packages. Together, the two companies are able to offer customers significant added value when it comes to digital services and their development.

On 20 September 2022, Digia Plc and Avalon Oy signed an agreement by which Digia acquires Avalon’s entire share capital. The acquisition is set to go through on 1 October 2022. The acquisition of Avalon further strengthens Digia’s market position as a leading comprehensive digitalisation partner and improves its ability to serve both companies’ customers in a wider way than ever.

Avalon offers its customers comprehensive digital marketing and customer experience development services based on the utilisation of data and analytics. Avalon’s customers include Canon, iLoq, Stora Enso, Pölkky and many other private-sector organisations. Avalon permanently employs 24 top professionals at its offices in Helsinki and Oulu.

“The world is becoming ever more complex and fast-paced, which is why we are developing Digia’s ability to be a partner that can produce exceptionally deep and relevant data-driven services for its customers. Avalon represents a new generation of customer experience creation in which customer experience (CX) and customer relationship management (CRM) become ever more intertwined,” says Digia’s SVP Sami Paihonen

 

Building a real-time customer experience with data and AI

Digia and Avalon believe in a world where customer experience and the associated digital design are based on the utilisation of data and AI. Real-time data analysis from different sources allows for rapid reaction to changes in the market and customers’ demands, both in the public and private sectors.

“Avalon is one of the best Finnish companies in the sector, and we will be continuing to design and implement relevant services together with pride from this point onward,” Paihonen continues.

Avalon’s merger with Digia offers the company’s current and future customers a more comprehensive package of digital data-based services, as well as expertise and resources for the implementation of real-time data utilisation solutions.

“Digia have extensive expertise in areas like AI and CRM, and we are seeing marketing data becoming an ever-larger part of the CRM data mass. This offers us real-time data on customers’ behaviour up to the purchase decision and allows us to react faster and design and provide packages that are capable of ever more profitable business operations,” says Avalon’s CEO Petri Laakso.

The parties have agreed not to publish the acquisition price. Avalon’s net sales for the financial period ending December 2021 were approximately EUR 2.4 million, and its operating margin was 15 per cent.

The acquisition will have no impact on personnel. Avalon’s figures will be consolidated with the Digia Group from the beginning of October 2022.

All Avalon employees will be integrated into Digia’s Intelligent Solutions business unit. Avalon will form a new business area with Digia’s business and design consulting unit. Petri Laakso has been appointed as the head of the new business area. The combined unit will continue operating under the Avalon brand as part of the Digia Group. Avalon’s founder and chairman Jari Laakso will be taking on a specialist position in which he will be most notably involved in customer experience development.

 

Further information:

Media contacts: communications@digia.com

Sami Paihonen
Senior Vice President, Intelligent Solutions, Digia Plc
tel. +358 50 502 1111
sami.paihonen@digia.com

Petri Laakso
CEO, Avalon Oy
tel. +358 40 086 3007
pete.laakso@avalon.fi

 

Digia in brief

Digia is a software and service company that helps its customers renew themselves in the networked world. There are more than 1,300 of us working at Digia. Our roots are in Finland and we operate both in our home country and internationally. We are building a world in which digitalisation makes a difference – together with our customers and partners. Digia’s net sales totalled EUR 156 million in 2021. The company is listed on Nasdaq Helsinki (DIGIA). digia.com

 

Avalon in brief

Founded in 1994, Avalon is a digital marketing company that offers its customers comprehensive digital marketing services, comprising services such as social media marketing, data and analytics and marketing automation. The company permanently employs 24 top professionals at its offices in Helsinki and Oulu.