Hello everyone. This Q3 results webcast. My name is Lari Nikkanen, and with me today are our CEO, Niilo Fredrikson, and COO, Steffan Schumacher. During this results webcast, we will be making some forward-looking statements, and we encourage all participants and investors to review the disclaimer from our presentation materials. As for today's agenda, we have 1 full hour for this webcast. We'll start with our CEO, Niilo, presenting our Q3 results. After the presentation, we will have the remaining time for our Q&A session. You may present your questions during the presentation by using the webcast portal's Q&A feature, and we'll answer your questions at the end of the presentation. This session will be also recorded, and a recording of the session will be made available on 's investor website. With that, I'll hand over to Niilo. Thank you, Lari. Hello everyone. Thanks for joining. What an eventful quarter it was again. Many things happened around us, but we focused on what we do best, helping people to Digitalize and Automate their work. Our strategy and vision are clear. We strive to become the undisputed number one in our space, service management in Europe. We call it becoming the leading European alternative. What it means is growing our revenues organically to 35 million by 2025 and eventually to EUR 100 million. There are four strategic cornerstones: growth, product, people, and M&A. The way I thought we'll start today is by looking at how did we execute against those four strategic cornerstones. Starting with growth, it was a very good quarter for growth. We grew total net sales by 26%, which I believe is one of the highest numbers on record for us. That included 29% SaaS growth, out of which the vast majority was driven by strong organic growth in SaaS of 25%, and on top of that, a few percentage points impact from the InteliWISE acquisition. International SaaS growth was at a good over 40% level even though the organic part of that was over slightly lower. In terms of products, we made several announcements, several interesting announcements. I'll talk a bit more about that later at our Digitalize and Automate event. We progressed well in the identity governance and administration space with adding several new customers. In total, already 15 new IGA customers during the first three quarters of the year. Our team has grown quite a bit, and I'm super happy that we've been able to maintain the culture, we've been able to maintain high employee satisfaction. As planned already earlier, we have been starting to slow down the recruitment speed a little bit. We're still adding people, but at a slower pace than before. We recruited many people, and we also added the InteliWISE team, and now of course, it's time to make sure that the whole new team is fully productive and working well together. M&A, I already touched upon that, has been, of course, super nice to welcome the talented Polish team as part of the Efecte family. One of the highlights to me personally was that we were able to publish the first joint product together with the InteliWISE team called Efecte Chat for Service Management so fast after the acquisition. Next, let's actually continue a little bit on product and some of the announcements, other announcements. Some of the other announcements at Digitalize and Automate. Just for anyone new to the Efecte story, Digitalize and Automate is an annual customer event we now ran for the third time, and we were able to get over 3,000 registered participants from over 50 countries, most of them in Europe. We had a great lineup of speakers, including people like Aleksandra Przegalińska, world-known AI expert and Fernando Alonso, obviously very well-known racing driver, and many, many other great speakers. Some of the key announcements you can see here. I already mentioned Efecte Chat for Service Management. Another big one on the product side was the new Efecte Self-Service, about which we've been talking for a while, and now we were able to tell that The pilot use with actual customers is starting, and this will be very exciting to follow that. I think it's a super important part of us delivering a modern user experience for all the Efecte users around there. We also announced some new partnerships, especially in the identity governance and administration space, namely with Innofactor and Signicat. One thing we've seen is that now that we've been successful in selling the IGA solution, clearly customers have a demand for more professional services. We are addressing that partially with our own people and then partially through partnerships. We've also been expanding our geographical presence, and later on when Steffan talks about the go-to-market, he'll cover that in more detail. As is the tradition, let's also look at the guidance. As you know, we upgraded the guidance a little bit in the summer, saying that, hey, we'll end up with approximately 25% SaaS growth and adjusted EBITDA margin that's gonna be positive. I'm of course super happy that we've been able to meet and exceed the guidance so far in the year with year to date SaaS growth of 26% and a 4% adjusted EBITDA margin. Even after the InteliWISE acquisition, which obviously had some impact on our profitability in terms of transaction cost, et cetera. Even after that, we are in a solid financial position, and given the type of economic environment that we are in, it's of course a good feeling to be in that position. We continued, well, what we've done now quite consistently, which is investing in long-term growth. we haven't wanted to optimize profitability for the short term, but the Efecte story has been about balanced growth, so we have also not sacrificed completely the bottom line to just focus on growth. It's a balanced growth plan that we are executing. Looking at some of the SaaS metrics. lifetime value to customer acquisition cost ratio was like super high. Maybe useful to note that there are a couple of things behind that. One being the large Kela deal being in the numbers and at the same time churn levels being super low, like 1.6% for the rolling 12 months period, which as we've said many times before, I don't think long term that they probably stay at that low levels. We've consistently been at 5% gross churn or below that kind of ballpark, which I consider a good level for a B2B SaaS business like ours. Kind of, you know, longer term, my expectation would be that we stay in that ballpark and if the churn would go up, of course, it would have some impact on the LTV calculation as well. I guess the bottom line is exceptionally good numbers here. Including of course, a Recurring Gross Margin, which to me is an important indicator of the inherent profit generating ability of this business in the long term. The MRR waterfall here. Well again, Net Retention Rate, of course, strong driven by long-term and us being able to continue growth with existing customers. In terms of new customer acquisition, we stayed at a good level. Of course there is the additional impact of InteliWISE acquisition, adding some MRR as well. Now, with that, let me welcome Steffan to join me here. Hello, Niilo. How are you, Steffan? I'm doing fine. Winter is coming, so you can [crosstalk] warm yourself up. There we go. It definitely is Efecte the beanie season again. I actually came to the office today wearing one. Here in Finland, you know, it's snow on the ground. Mm-hmm And the winter definitely already there. Yeah. It's important to keep your head warm, so your kind of thoughts are very crisp and sharp. That's, you know, some great fun business fundamentals there. Yeah. Hey, I mean, let's look at the go to market. Obviously, we'll go into the Q&A later, but, looking at go to market, what are your thoughts on Q3? Yep. Thanks. Definitely, you know, you started the session pretty kind of positioning pretty nicely. During Q3, we are focused on what we do the best. We focus on our customers, our partners, and our employees. We are on this long-term journey to help our customers to digitalize and automate their work. I think that's something we focused a lot during Q3. I mean, our SaaS growth was fundamentally at 29%, and out of that 29%, 4 percentage point came through the InteliWISE acquisition. Despite that, I think it was a solid good quarter on SaaS performance. As said, there was an impact of this one, I think kind of one larger deal into those numbers. If you look at the specific markets, I think Finland, Poland, and our new markets really delivered the biggest highlights for Q3. For example, in the U.K., we have worked with a few partners and got one larger deal out of the U.K. Then, you know, there is some smaller success, for example, in South Africa, in which we signed a very small, kind of a smaller new customer. Making progress on multiple fronts there. Definitely the InteliWISE acquisition gives us the opportunity to go into the Polish market also directly with the Efecte solution. We have been taking the first steps in Poland, it will still take a few more months for us to kind of get everything up and running there. I mean, in the German-speaking Europe, in the DACH region, you know, we saw some delays in customer decision-making during Q3, but we stay confident on our execution and our strategy in the DACH market. We have a good pipeline there, which we can work on during Q4 and the next year. In Sweden, we announced a new leadership position in Sweden, and we have a plan in place to kind of continue investments and growth in our Swedish market. I mean, we also announced earlier that we are gonna enter Spain as one of our direct markets. We have now our first team members on site, and we are working on the go-to-market strategy, activating customers, activating partners, and I think we're gonna give you more updates as we kind of progress on that journey. While, you know, the market has been volatile, I think there are a lot of kind of sweet spots and a lot of markets and industries that are very strong. For example, public sector demand for our solution is strong, and we have increased our efforts in that space. Overall, I feel really happy about our Q3 performance. I have very much confidence on how we're gonna close up the year. I think that's a quick update on the go-to-market. Great. Thank you. Fantastic summary. I'm sure there will be a question or two once we get to the Q&A in a minute about some of these topics. Hey, let's leave the go-to-market now for a minute and wrap it up and then move forward to the Q&A. I mean, our guidance remains unchanged. Like Steffan said, we're happy where we are after Q3. We are confident also about the rest of the year. Looking at where we are this year and how we are positioned for next year, we also look optimistically into next year. We have a world-class team in place. We operate in a growing market. I mean, our addressable market is growing still healthy double digits. We set a high ambition to become the European leader in our space. We have the product that we need optimized for the European mid-market and public sector. When you look at our track record, you look at the SaaS unit economics, I think it's fair to say that it's a pretty solid story so far. I personally feel very, very happy to be part of this team and continue our growth as we build the leading European alternative in service management. With that, I think it's time to see if there are any questions that we can address together with Steffan. Lari, well, how's the question pipeline looking like? Building up. Thank you. Thank you, Niilo. As per usual, we have a very healthy pipeline of questions. Just as a reminder, you can present your questions by using the webcast portal's Q&A feature. With that, let's pick up the first question. All right. Fire away. Niilo, can you please describe Efecte's recent performance in large European economies like Germany? Are you still winning new customers? Thank you, Lari. The answer is yes, we are performing and winning new customers. Like Steffan mentioned, we have seen, specifically in the DACH region, we have seen a slight difference to the rest of the markets we operate in terms of some customers clearly delaying decision-making. I mean, most of them have good reasons, internal reasons, et cetera, but still the overall picture that we get that that market is a little bit getting more careful or slowing down compared to before. There is that. At the same time, we have a pipeline of cases that we work on. We have a good team in place. And we're continuing to grow in the German market. Yeah, that's where we are. Thanks, Niilo. Maybe as a follow-up question to the previous one. As you mentioned, in DACH, you saw some delays in customer decision-making. Does it mean that some deals in DACH will be moved to Q4, or is there a bigger delay? Well, you know, you know how it works in sales. You know, obviously, you always work hard to bring the deals in as soon as possible. My expectation, and I would love to hear also Steffan's point of view on this, but my expectation is that some of those deals we'll bring in in Q4, and maybe for some it might be that they're delayed for the longer term. Yeah, exactly like that. I mean, some of the deals that we saw delays, I mean, have been closed now during the, during Q4, and now we're still working on a good pipeline. As Niilo said, I mean, it's our job to ensure those deals gets closed. Yep. That's how it goes. Maybe just to point out in a way now that we're talking about, you know, some of the signs in the market, you know, we want to be always transparent sharing what we see out there, you know, the good and the bad. I want to make sure that it doesn't get overemphasized because, I mean, if you look at the performance so far and you look at our guidance and you look at our confidence for the rest of the year, it's not like, you know, we think that suddenly, you know, some major thing massively changes. Some, you know, more of these sort of silent or weak signals. We want to stay vigilant and really kind of change all the time with the changing market needs to be able to optimally address the needs of our customer base. One of those things that applies, I think would be fair to say in all or at least most of our markets, is that stronger demand, strong demand from the public sector, and we noticed that, and we've increased our effort in that space just as one example how we at Efecte adapt when the market changes. Yeah. I think the benefit we have, I mean, we are still just addressing a very small market. I mean, if you look at our market share in Europe, it's still not, like, significant. It means there's a huge market for us. When we play it with our playing cards, being agile, providing the customers the right experience with a cost that makes sense, we're gonna always have an opportunity to win, and that's, I think, the kind of the great thing being at Efecte. We can really listen to our customers and adjust when needed. Absolutely. Absolutely. I know it's already a long answer, but I still add one more thing. Great question, by the way. just maybe zooming out a little bit and reflecting on the past years as well. it's always interesting to see. I mean, the market changes all the time. You know, in 2020, the pandemic hit and you know, obviously we had to adapt to that situation. We changed some things in our go-to market, et cetera, and we were able to do that successfully. 2021 was again a different year. Now in 2022, all sorts of things happen again in the environment, both geopolitically and from an economic point of view. it's of course just, you know, what we do. We look at what happens and then we adapt to it and I think we have a great kind of foundation for being able to succeed and grow also in the middle of the changes that we see in the market right now. Thank you, Niilo and Steffan. That was an extensive answer. Moving on to the next question. We have actually a couple of questions on the InteliWISE integration. Maybe as first, can you give a general comment on how do you feel about the integration process? Is it going well? Sure. Maybe you start, Steffan. What are you seeing from the field team's point of view? It's a good question. I mean, first of all, I'm so excited to have the InteliWISE team joining us, and hopefully a lot of you are listening to this webcast as well. It's great to have you on board of the team. I mean, when we talk about these integrations, there are always multiple layers, but everything starts with the people, and I think we are now stronger together. We have a great team in Poland. You know, we have worked a lot together, and one of the testaments maybe is this, is that we got our first joint product out in just a few months after the official acquisition was done. We announced that product in our Digitalize and Automate event end of September. We have already, kind of signed up first customers during Q3 and now in Q4 on that new solution. I think that's just a testament of the kind of the for the teams working together. Surely, you know, there's still a lot of more opportunity to go after, and I'm more excited about that opportunity we can now go after. Mm. You know, entering the Polish market, driving all of that, upsell opportunity of the InteliWISE, portfolio conversational AI portfolio into our existing customers. Also, you know, that conversational AI by itself is one part of our solution portfolio now. There's a great opportunity to take that portfolio and sell that into. Mm The existing markets as well. Yeah, no. There may be a few thoughts. No, no. Great, great points. I think overall Marcin and the whole team, whole InteliWISE team, it's been great to see how they've become part of Efecte and how the type of commitment and spirit and skill and talent they bring to our team. Very happy with how it's been going so far. At the same time, you know, it's still early days, of course lots of work left for us to make sure that it becomes a real success story. Thanks, Niilo and Steffan. Maybe zooming in a bit on the, on the recently launched, joint product. What kind of customers are piloting the unified live chat and chatbot offering, and what are their responses so far? So, um, I [crosstalk] think we have. Yeah. Let's start with, I believe we have three. Am I right? Three agreed pilot [crosstalk] customers. Mm-hmm. I'm not sure about each of them in which kind of phase. Mm-hmm Of the piloting, they are. We have three signed up. I think one is a university, right? Two private customers. Two private. Mm Private sector customers. I think it's quite early now still for the feedback, but the first comments I have heard have been about positive about the modern UI, point one, and then about the integration into the Efecte user interface being the second point I've heard. Yep. I mean, the key use case for the customers is for them to automate service requests and conversations from the end users. For example, me as an IT end user, I have a challenge. I wanna kind of try to solve it, and with the certain new technology, we can help the end user to solve their problems automatically. That kind of saves cost, makes the customer environment, the customer more productive, the end user more productive. When needed, they can kind of escalate that discussion to a live agent into the Efecte agent view, and then you have a basically a seamless experience in which you can help the end user live. I think that's where what a lot of our customers are looking for, and positive feedback so far. It's that whole integration, the experience, how it feels, and all of that. Mm-hmm That brings value. Cool. Thanks. As next question, we have a general question on Efecte's M&A strategy. How is your M&A appetite right now with InteliWISE integration happening? Are you still actively working on M&A pipeline in the short term? That's another good one. That's another good one. InteliWISE was the first acquisition we made. I think I feel good about us being now at this point after announcing the M&A intent and strategy a year or so ago, and now us being at this point that we found a company and a team that we really liked, and we were able to execute the transaction, which wasn't simple in the sense that they were listed on the NewConnect marketplace in Poland, so there was a little bit of extra work for Lari and many others in the team. First of all, just wanted to say that I feel good about where we are now in terms of M&A. At the same time, while it was the first, I don't think it will remain the last. There will be more. There will be more, for sure. We always said that we keep, in a way, the bar high. We don't want to go for M&A just for M&A's sake, that there needs to be an element of strengthening our technologies platform, strengthening our team, or strengthening our go-to-market in a meaningful way. I think we are also realistic about, integration is always tough. It requires a lot of management, attention. It puts a little bit of stress on the whole organization. You know, you don't want to do those just because. In that sense, it's not like, you know, we're desperately seeking for the next one. We are actively working on an M&A pipeline, and then once we found, find the next suitable target with whom we come to terms in terms of joining forces, then we are definitely ready to go for a next one. There is no hurry, and we're being very thoughtful about it. Thank you, Niilo. Next, we have a question on our SaaS growth. In your report, you mentioned that organic SaaS growth was supported by the Kela deal deployment advancing and the use of related temporary product subscriptions increasing. Mm-hmm. Did Kela deal produce any SaaS revenue or some subscriptions already included in Q3 MRR? Yes. Answer is yes. There was some SaaS revenue from temporary, project time, project-related, SaaS subscriptions, already during Q4, so it ramped up during Q3. The expectation we have is that for the most part, that will turn into production subscriptions, meaning that it will be visible also, in the MRR for the most part by the end of the year. In Q3, there was no MRR related to this customer, right? Yeah, correct. There was an impact on SaaS, but it was not yet visible in the MRR because it's not yet a permanent subscription, so to say. It was a project time temporary, subscription that we of course recognized in the SaaS revenue but didn't want to add to the MRR yet. Thanks, Niilo, for the clarification. Next we have a question also on our reporting. Could you please describe the relations between SaaS and services? When customers buy your SaaS product, do they automatically buy services? May they choose not to buy any services? Okay [crosstalk]. Maybe [crosstalk] I can take that. Go ahead. In a way, a really good question. If you look at the life cycle of an Efecte customer, when we do a new customer, when we sign up a new customer, there's always some professional services work required for the implementation of the Efecte solution, and that depends on the customer. Some customers are okay to go with our prepackaged ready-made processes, and then the implementation time is less. Some of the customers want to go and they want to customize and adapt the processes to their own needs, and then it might be a bit of more professional services. After this initial implementation, there's gonna be professional services to support the customer during the customer lifetime. That's one option, Efecte does it. There's also the option for us, for Efecte not to deliver professional services. Mm-hmm. That's when we talk about our partners. We have a lot of opportunities which our partners work on, and we as Efecte do the subscription of the software, and then our partners do all of the implementation work. That's maybe those two options. Thanks, Steffan. We have a question on a public sector demand. As mentioned in the report, you say that demand in the public sector is strong. Are you here talking about Finland, or have you been able to break into DACH public sector customers? Maybe I'll start with the brief comment, and Steffan, you can give a little. Mm Bit more flavor. Yes On top of that. We have public sector customers also outside Finland, and we have been, actually quite successful also outside Finland with public sector customers, including, Sweden and Germany. That's maybe the first part of the answer, just to lay a foundation. In terms of the recent changes in the market and how we go kind of after. Mm Maybe you want to build on that. You know, when we talk about public sector demand and you look at our solution portfolio, we sell the ITSM solution. We sell the enterprise service management solution. We have our IGA solution for identity governance and access. Now as the new piece, we have the conversational AI piece. It seems that the combination of these solutions is currently something that a lot of the public sector is looking for. You know, all of the public sector players, they want to digitalize, they wanna automate, they wanna become more productive in providing services to citizens, to different places. I think we have a unique positioning there because of the a lot of the kind of key value propositions we have. You know. Mm-hmm We have the agility to kind of meet the demands of the public sector. We have a solution that meets their budget requirements. Thirdly, which is an important part, is that we can provide the Efecte solution with the cloud that on customer's own terms. I think all of these coming together make the value proposition really strong. Yeah. The Cloud on your own terms concept is definitely one. Mm Which has helped us in recent times. I mean, it's not all of the customers, it's not all of the public sector customers. Mm. Some customers in critical industries across public sector, defense, financial services, definitely put a value on our ability to provide Cloud on their own terms, to give them a full Cloud SaaS experience, but for them being able to decide where their data and applications reside. Thanks. Next we have a question on Efecte's IGA customers. You mention in the report that you have been able to acquire 15 IGA customers. What type of customers are these? Are they existing ITSM/ESM customers or net new customers? Both. I tried once in my life to answer shortly. Both. Thank you. As a follow-up question, can you estimate the mix between these types of customers? I'm [crosstalk]. Yeah I don't have that in top of my head. Yeah [crosstalk]. Me neither, but it's, I mean, it's not massivel skewed towards. No I mean, it's not 99% and 1% either Mm Either or, so it's. I would[crosstalk] say. it's a balanced mix. It's a balanced mix. It's both private, public, new, existing. There's a, there's a big demand for that solution right now. Thanks, Steffan and Niilo. Next question. You mentioned in the report increasing sales efforts towards public sector. How easy is it for you to change your sales focus between markets and customer segments? Maybe this, again, one for you. Yeah Address. In a way, public sector is special in a way, if you look at the public sector tendering process, so it's governed by local laws. You know, in Finland, you have the local, procurement law that manages, kind of defines the way public sector procures in Finland. You have the same in Sweden, in Germany. Definitely then if you go to the, if you go after those tenders, you need to have very specific approach to every single market. A lot of these are tender-driven, so you have a lot of questions. You need to fulfill requirements of the customer, and then basically you submit the offer or the tender, and then after a while, the customer decides. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and that's how it works. If you look at how do we adjust the go-to-market, I think each of these public tender is, they have a lot of similarities, and then each of them has a bit of unique points. Every time we go into the tendering process, 80% of the things we are ready, and there's a small piece which we then need to work on that is customer-specific. Mm. I mean, overall, I don't see, you know, any big hurdles in that or in a way that it will take more resources from us or anything like that. Mm. It's just like it's a different procurement process. No. It's a question of resource allocation. Mm. We have a good field sales team in place and a marketing team in place, and then it's a question about kind of time allocation and how much we emphasize different markets, different market segments. That said, now we've shifted a little bit, nothing dramatic recognized the opportunity in public sector and trying to make sure that we capture that and are able to help those customers. Maybe one more thing on public sector. I don't think we mentioned this, but just a small interesting detail in terms of outside Finland. We also made the U.K. government G-Cloud [crosstalk] catalog. That's [crosstalk] a good point. Yeah. That's a really good point that I actually, I had it on my Post-it to talk about it when I talked about the go-to-market, that was one significant thing. We applied and worked with the UK Government, they have this kind of a G-Cloud certification, basically we are now certified or, I don't know if it's the right word, we can sell directly now to the UK Government without public tendering. That was a significant kind of achievement, that's gonna help us as we go into the UK market. Great. Thanks, Niilo. It's good to have a backup memory. You know, one Efecte, right? Yeah. Thanks, Niilo and Steffan. Next, we have a question on on Efecte's sales pipeline. As you're shifting focus towards public sector, are there many Kela-sized deals in your sales pipeline currently from the public sector or otherwise? I mean, we have not commented the sales pipeline so far. I mean, I have nothing to share there. You know, we. I mean, in our team, we try to maximize our sales pipeline. We want that to be as big as possible. We take every single deal that we can get into the pipeline. Then we work really hard to get them closed. Yeah, absolutely. Of course, goes without saying that, I mean, if you look at the Efecte customer base, the Kela type of deals and magnitude deals, that's definitely not the rule. That's more the exception. You know, the kind of bread and butter where our growth is coming from is way smaller deals and new customers. I think one of the fundamental strengths of Efecte has been the ability then to grow. I mean, let's say there is a new customer coming in with, you know, a few thousand MRR. Mm. You know, over time, it starts growing. They take Efecte into use in more use cases, in more departments, and the MRR starts growing, and that's how we end up with that strong Net Retention Rate. Of course, you know, it's nice, every now and then to get, you know, some of these larger deals, and of course, we keep going after those also in the future, but that's kind of how the whole equation looks like. Thanks, Niilo. Next, we have actually a personal question to Steffan. Steffan, what are your key things to focus for a successful Q4? Very personal question. Hey, hey, how many weeks do we have left for the quarter? 6 weeks. I [crosstalk] mean. Yeah. Five [crosstalk] or six, right It's five weeks to Christmas, and then everyone is gonna be off, and we are midway the quarter, and I'm still smiling. I think what's important at this stage of the quarter is that, I mean, in any sales organization, you know, you have basically, you know what you need to get done. You know, we have the deals in the pipeline. In a way, we need to work with our customers to control the, our selling process, and the customer needs to kind of help us to understand their buying process. I think to come back to the question, it's focus. We know what to get done, and now we need to get it done. I feel confident about our capability to deliver what we have promised to all of you. Yeah. Then I think it was kind of part of what you said, but maybe for the audience, just to make it clear that when we think about closing Q4. Mm It includes both things on the sales front. Mm But also things in terms of delivery. Yeah, you're right. Making sure that customers who have signed up previously or during the quarter, that we help them to go into production and kind of realize the value of their purchase. That's another kind of fundamental piece of helping our customers Digitalize and Automate their work. Step one, let's agree on, you know, them getting on the [crosstalk] Efecte train. Yeah Sign the contract. Mm-hmm And get the train ticket. Then step 2 is make sure that they get moving and their users get their hands on. Yeah The new Efecte environment. That's how they realize then the value out of their Efecte investment. Yeah. Really, really good, really good point there because, I mean, in the end, the customers do realize the value of the Efecte platform only when they get to use it. I mean, even in Q4, we are gonna still gonna have a lot of big go lives with our customers. Everything is well prepared, and, you know, we are executing on both fronts, helping our customers realize the value and then ensuring there's enough work for us to do also in Q1 to realize even more customer value. Thanks. Next, shifting a bit focus on the market environment. How do you see the rising inflation affecting your growth plans? Can you carry out the increasing costs to your customers? Just to start with, looking at our pricing principles and pricing approach, we will always want it to be fair and reasonable. At the same time, of course, you know, we're here to run a business. Even before the current situation, we have implemented reasonable price increases. Now, in the environment that we are in, we continue to do that. We do it in what we believe is a fair and transparent way. Not kind of in a way, in the wrong way, taking advantage of the situation either. There are also those kind of companies who sort of use the moment for some maybe outsized increases. Also we don't want to be in the bucket of companies who are not able to do fair increases to account for the increased cost in operational expenses across the board, which definitely we are seeing. We are doing price increases. Now, Lari, I think I forgot if there was another part of the question than the kind of [crosstalk] pricing question. Inflation overall, I guess. Yeah, inflation overall. Yeah, I don't know if you have any comment, but I mean, we are seeing, obviously, we're not operating in a vacuum, so we know milk costs more than before and, you know, many things, we're seeing a slight price increase and in some things even a bigger price increase. Our ability then to carry over that into our top line and our pricing is, of course important. Thanks, Niilo. As a follow-up question, how do you see the gross margin development for next years given the inflation environment? Yeah. Well, you know, We are not going to start give a guidance on gross margin. What I'll say is that we always thought that kind of that 80% ballpark for Recurring Gross Margin is in a way you know, sign of a healthy healthy SaaS business. Whether that Recurring Gross Margin then, you know, is slightly below or slightly above, I don't think that is a kind of I don't think that makes a massive difference. Of course, we're trying to keep it, you know, as high as possible. Whether there will be an impact from the current situation probably depends a little bit on our ability to execute everything. Definitely, you know, we're not planning to sacrifice that or get to completely, you know, much lower levels in there, but some natural fluctuation might happen. Maybe another perspective on that. In a way, we do manage it carefully. You know, it's a combination of our SaaS revenue growth and then the cost that we put in to deliver that SaaS revenue. We, you know, we are running analytics and models on how the customer base is increasing and how fast we need to kind of increase those support functionalities and then, you know, it's increasing, but it's also kind of inherently looking at productivity opportunities inside Efecte. Like, you know, we talked about Digitalize and Automate, I think. We are no way other than any other company. There's an opportunity for us also to Digitalize and Automate, and I think that's it's combination of those we are working on. Basically, message is we are working, I mean, we are managing it carefully. We have a process to look at it and doing our best every single day. Mm-hmm To provide good customer service at the same time as looking at the cost we have to deliver it. Yep. Good addition. Thanks. Thanks. Next, we have a question on recruitment. As you said in your report, you slowed down your recruitment in Q3. Was this a result of the market uncertainty or was the plan already in place when you made your strategy update earlier this year? Yeah. Well, if you look at what we've been saying in previous reports, I believe at least in the half year report in the summer we mentioned that our plan is to slow down the recruiting towards the end of the year. In that sense, it was definitely a planned move. And yeah, I don't see anything dramatic there. If you count the new people that we recruited both organically. Mm-hmm This year, then you count in the InteliWISE team, you know, it's, I don't even know the exact number, but we are talking about like probably, you know, 60, 70 something in that ballpark kind of new people. Given our, you know, we are not that big of a team, it's a huge increase percentage-wise. Definitely it makes sense. Even from that point of view, it does make sense for us to now just make sure that we consolidate it a little bit and get everybody up to speed to full productivity and through that are able to realize the gains from this, you know, very talented and now grown team. Thanks, Niilo. Maybe as a follow-up, after you have been able to consolidate the newly recruited employees, is your plan to repeat similar growth investments in 2023 or should we expect recruitment pace to remain a bit slower? I'll refer to our guidance, right? We've said that we aim at growing our business to be EUR 35 million or more by 2025 and at the same time reach a double-digit EBITDA margin. That's kind of the financial frame inside which we as management operate. That's in a way sets the context for these decisions. You know, whether in an individual quarter or year, if we hire more people or less people and how we manage all the other cost and top line items, you know, that's all being done, of course, with this target in mind. It depends, of course, on, you know, the demand in the market, for example, in terms of professional services, how much we need to grow our own professional services, how much the partners are able to take care of that, how we see the productivity developing in our go-to market in terms of the sales and marketing and how we're able to produce the type of product outcomes in our R&D operation. I mean, we have a really good plan, ambitious plan in place also in that area. As a combination of all of these and inside that frame that our guidance for 2025 provides, that's how we make those decisions. Thanks, Niilo. Next we have a question on sales. How do you see your sales employee turnover compared to other sales organizations? What keeps your salespeople in the company and why do they leave if they leave? Uh [crosstalk]. Steffan, why are you still here? Good question. I mean, it's great to deliver 29% size- SaaS growth in Q3. I think that makes you happy. That was well done. Yeah. It's not me. I mean, it's the whole Efecte team here. We are working together on this. I mean, it's a good question. I mean, if you look at overall Efecte turnover, of employee turnover, we've been extremely happy and we are extremely grateful. We have a talented team that wants to be part of the Efecte journey and our mission to become the leading European alternative in service management space. I think that's a kind of a big strong statement, a vision, and we have a lot of people that, you know, they feel they wanna be with that story and with Efecte. A big thank you for the team. Overall our turnover has been has been at Efecte level very reasonable. If you look. If you then drill down to the sales employees, you know, it's no other than any other company. There needs to be, you know, the workplace they work in, it needs to be a place where you get challenges, where you get opportunities. I mean, you need to have clarity on what is expected from you. When you have that clarity and you deliver results, I mean, that then kind of creates more energy into the sales team. You know, we have been lucky to have a lot of success in our sales teams. A lot of people that have been there for a long time, they know their customers very well. Mm-hmm. We have a team that's focusing on new customer acquisition, and they are very active and doing a good job there. I mean, we have lost maybe one person or so in the past half a year on our sales team, so. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's been super aligned, of course. I mean, the old saying goes that people join good companies and leave bad bosses. I think, Steffan, you've done an amazing job with the whole field team there. I think that has huge impact. Just give one concrete example. I think in the German team, which is already almost 20 people. Mm-hmm. There is another Steffan, like our country manager. Yes Steffan Schumacher. now, been there for many years, and I think built a really nice, team and culture. I don't think they lost a single person, not in sales or anywhere else in the last year. Mm-hmm. Just as an example of that low attrition. I mean, while we're on the topic, I'm gonna share one more example. In many customers, we have people that have worked with the customer longer than the customer's own employees have been there. We have customers where we have sales, have had salespeople for six, seven years, and I think that builds up that consistency. Sure. And [crosstalk] customer understanding and I think that is really important. It's, by the way, it's quite exceptional. Mm. If you think about kind of sales role turnover. Mm Typically, it's a bit faster, so, good point. Thanks, Niilo and Steffan. As our time reserved for this Q&A is coming slowly to the end, one final question on, for Niilo and Steffan. How would you summarize your own feelings about Efecte's Q3 performance? Were you happy and were there any surprises? I mean, it's always, while, I would have a tendency go and cheer here and so forth, in a way it's always a mixed bag. You know, there are a lot of things that we did extremely well. You know, we were able to deliver the commitment we made for the company, for all of the investors, all of our employees. You know, we worked very, very hard with our customers. Our churn numbers improved, our NRR numbers improved. Mm. We made a lot of progress on multiple fronts. On the other hand, I always tend to say that the biggest room in the house is the room of. Improvement Improvement. Exactly. In a way, on the other hand, there's so many things we can be better on. You know, there's so many customer engagements we could have done better. There's so many other things we could have done better. I mean, there are things where we could have reacted faster. In a way I feel balanced. You know, there are things we did well we should be really, really proud of as a team and, you know, that's a great thing. On the other hand, there's also a lot of things that, you know, we could have done better. In a way I feel confident, but I know that we have a lot of work ahead of us. Yeah. No. That's an excellent balanced perspective on it. Maybe I'll just add in a way, the strategic perspective. We are in the process of building the leading European alternative in service management, becoming the undisputed leader in this space in Europe and that's a high ambition. It's a bold ambition and with that come also bold financial goals like getting to that EUR 35 million by 2025, and then eventually building a EUR 100 million business. We have a strategy in place, kind of our roadmap of how to get there based on these four key pieces of growth, product, people and M&A. Now, looking at any individual quarter, I like to reflect back on our strategy. Did we make progress with our strategy? Did we get closer to our vision? Kind of putting those kind of lenses on, I think Q3 was definitely a success. You know, we are closer to our vision, and we were able to execute well in all four pieces of our strategy. Of course goes without saying what Steffan highlighted, that it's not to say that we wouldn't look in the mirror each day and ask, "Hey, how can we do things better? And what could we have done better?" Kind of zooming out, looking at the big picture, I don't think there is any other way to characterize Q3 than saying that it was a very successful quarter for Efecte. Thanks, Niilo and Steffan. With that, as our time is time reserved for this webcast is running out, we want to thank you everyone who, for excellent questions and for listening in. Thank you. There was that personal question, what do you focus on? I'm not now going to go there. Focus on the Q4. Yeah. No, that's great plan. I think we all are. hey, it's kind of the last time this year that we're gonna be on this. Mm Earnings call. Hey, really big thank you to all of you for being on board the Efecte journey. It's fantastic to have you as part of the story. All the best for the rest of the year and look forward to meeting all of you then in the new year as we're gonna talk about the full year results. Happy holiday season as well. Keep warm.