Inom kursen ”Business English” ordnades i april 2021 en tävling där uppgiften var att skriva en journalistisk text om ett virtuellt företagsbesök. Följande 3 artiklar valdes ut som vinnare:

Andreas Eriksson

Virtual presentation at Företagsbyrån

The students of the course ‘Business English’ participated in a virtual presentation held at Företagsbyrån on March 16. In this presentation we learned more about the organization as a whole, and how they conduct their business throughout the Aland Islands. We also got to know the presenter, Conny Söderholm, a former Mechanical Engineering-student at the Åland University of Applied Sciences. Conny later graduated with a Master’s degree in 2017 at Aalto University. Having been employed in places such as Ecomar and Foreship, he later arrived to Företagsbyrån in 2019. This is where his career in IT began.

Företagsbyrån was founded in 1973 as a subsidiary of the Bank of Åland. However, since 2012 Företagsbyrån has been owned by its staff. Today Företagsbyrån has approximately 40 employees and offers services in accounting, payroll administration and IT-services. The company is thus a very good place to start a career in the field of economics or IT.

I would like to thank Conny Söderholm for an informative presentation about the company and for sharing an insight into his own career.

Jack Mattsson

Företagsbyrån – a virtual company tour with Conny Söderlund

Conny is a mechanical engineer turned programmer who as a young kid wanted to be a professional footballer and now works as an IT-specialist in Företagsbyrån in Mariehamn.
Företagsbyrån on the Åland Islands is a company that apart from general accounting and financial statements provides a business support system called “Lemonsoft” where you can do everything from accounting and invoicing to keeping track of your inventory and managing bigger projects. Conny briefly took us through the software and explained what his part of the job was, why Företagsbyrån uses the software and how you could use Lemonsoft in different professions. In his spare time Conny enjoys chess, Python programming and a special club called “Toastmasters”. Toastmasters is designed to develop members’ leadership and public speaking skills and you can really tell how excited Conny is about it.

How to speak in public
Conny described himself as an introvert that had trouble speaking in front of others before he found “Toastmasters” and now he really enjoys it and takes every opportunity he can to make speeches and presentations and he even made a speech on the company kick-off earlier this year that was very popular among the staff.
The most interesting part of the whole presentation according to me was the small tips and tricks Conny gave for public speaking. He showed the meaning of different hand gestures and how important they are for the viewers experience. For example if you move your hand over your heart when speaking you signal that it’s something very important to you, “close to your heart” so to speak. And even if the presentation of Företagsbyrån and the company’s business support software was the main focus of the presentation and very compelling, the little bits of information on how to speak and present was just as interesting, and maybe even more important to take with you.

Malin Hykkyrä

Article for the In-House Magazine

You may know that Åland’s only authorized accounting firm Företagsbyrån is working with accounting and salary. But did you also know that Företagsbyrån is working with so-called warehousing and cash registers? All these assignments Företagsbyrån does in a program called Lemonsoft. We got a presentation about this program from Conny Söderholm, who currently works as an IT-specialist at Företagsbyrån and has a bachelor degree in Mechanical Engineering from Åland University of Applied Sciences.

Företagsbyrån provides a broad scale of services that customers can pick and choose from. Examples for what services the company provides, other than already mentioned, are logistics, invoices, tax returns, sales orders, etc. All of these circulation services are done in the program Lemonsoft, which is meant to make it easier for the customer to use. The customer can be both big and small companies.

Even though Conny currently works with IT, he started out working in maritime companies. He switched career paths totally in 2019. Conny himself said that when he started working at Företagsbyrån he only knew the company worked with accounting. So companies usually do more internally than what the customers see on the surface. Which is something to think about while choosing a career path, and also remember that it’s never too late to switch paths in your career!