Employee Interview

From student to trusted consultant: Henri Paananen’s journey at Intito

From student to trusted consultant: Henri Paananen’s journey at Intito

January 22, 2025
Henri Paananen at the beginning of his Intito journey in 2021, wearing a suit and posing confidently against a neutral background.

Henri Paananen joined Intito in May 2021, fresh out of school, with only a few courses and his thesis left to complete. Besides his studies, Henri had worked as an auditor trainee in PwC. Henri didn’t know much about Intito at the time, but he was intrigued by the combination of technical expertise and financial knowledge required. He had always enjoyed working with Excel macros and saw an opportunity to do what he loved, with more sophisticated tools and perhaps even some coding.

One of his vivid early memories was when Kristian showed him IBM Planning Analytics Cube rule files during the job interview. “I remember Kristian showing me a rule file and asking if I could handle something like that, and I said sure, I’ll get the hang of it!” he recalls. Henri’s first days at Intito were filled with training, and he was soon fully immersed in real customer projects.

Diving into the first projects

Henri’s first client project was done to a Swedish food producer, where his knowledge of Swedish came in handy. Working with the customer’s team, he helped transition their TM1 solution into Planning Analytics Workspace. The next step was to move their Excel reports into Cognos Analytics dashboards. This helped the customer keep their reports up to date and maintain a single version of the truth.

Henri almost found himself specializing solely in Cognos Analytics due to back-to-back projects with two European customers, both relying heavily on that platform. But he realized that he wanted to get deeper into customers’ businesses. “With reporting, you only present data that already exists. I wanted to get more involved in financial consulting, where you’re planning for the future,” he explains. His growing interest in planning led him deeper into the Planning Analytics domain.

Among his favorite projects was developing a pricing model for Apetit (a Finnish food industry company), a particularly interesting challenge. Another unique experience was working with a Norwegian organization where the process was vastly different from typical budgeting projects.

Euro-Henkka is born

Along with the first Swedish customer came new European customers. Soon Henri got a new nickname – Euro-Henkka. It was invented by his colleagues. It suited him well, after all he’d been working for so many clients that weren’t from Finland. Someone might get dizzy in such a work environment, but not Euro-Henkka. “I get excited about the new and unknown, it inspires me. My dream customer would be an organization that goes beyond annual budgeting and forecasting and uses Planning Analytics for more operational tasks, such as pricing. The more operational and detailed the better!” he wishes.

What drives Henri at Intito

What Henri enjoys most about his work is solving complex problems. “It feels great when you crack a tough problem, like getting a REST API connection to work,” he says. He thrives in situations where he needs to investigate, test, and collaborate with colleagues to find the best solution. At Intito, Henri finds it easy to ask for help, whatever the problem.

According to Henri, one of the best things about working at Intito is the team. “I know everyone praises their workplace on these kinds of interviews, but I think we have something special here at Intito. The team is full of nice, supportive people, and the company genuinely cares about its employees,” he concludes.

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