RELEX offers solutions that improve the retailers’ competitiveness. Using RELEX’s software, retail companies can improve availability and sales, optimize inventory management and reduce waste and labor costs. Worldwide, RELEX’s software is used by leading brands such as S Group, WHSmith, Morrisons, AO.com, Coop Denmark and Rossmann, and the company operates in more than ten countries.
RELEX’s operations and product development are managed from its headquarters in Helsinki, but due to its fast growth and international expansion, the company has already established country offices in 11 countries and has system users all over the world.
RELEX hired over 200 people in 2017 and is one Finland’s fastest growing software companies. The company continues to aim for high growth, so the need for new employees is still high.
RELEX’s strength lies in its software, which provides clear added value to its customers, and the company invests tremendously into developing that software with the latest technologies such as machine learning. RELEX has even developed its own database to manage the massive amounts of customer data.
RELEX’s team is highly international and consists of top professionals in their fields. One of the top experts is Jasmin Karasar, who has been working for RELEX since 2011. She was the 30th employee back then, whereas today, the company employs over 500 people.
Karasar was still a student when she started at RELEX, graduating from Aalto University in 2014 with a Master’s degree in Information Technology. “RELEX was my first real job in the industry, and I got a lot of responsibility right away. The company values skills more than the number of years in experience.”
When RELEX opened a US branch office in 2015, Karasar joined the office in its early stages, and she has been working there since 2016. “I was already involved when we expanded to Sweden, Norway and the UK, so I was familiar with the process of opening a new market.”
Karasar feels that RELEX offers as many career paths as there are people working for the company. “My own path has been traditional, but many have, for example, advanced from the technical side to product development or management. The strong growth and internationalization has opened up numerous career opportunities.”
“I believe that my own career at RELEX will continue for a long time as I am able to combine the technical work with client work,” Karasar adds.
The future will bring new challenges
Portuguese João Alves came to RELEX from Germany when he set out to find a job in Finland and move here with his Finnish girlfriend. “The whole recruitment process went well with RELEX. I got the reply to my application, the invitation to interview and the job offer all very quickly.”
In general, Alves felt that it was peculiar that although many job postings in Finland were written in English, fluency in the Finnish language was a required skill in most of them. “At RELEX, English is the official language and no other language skills are necessary.”
At first, Alves’ job as a software developer included fixing minor bugs, but his responsibilities have grown ever since. RELEX’s internationalization has brought ever-larger customers to the company, leading to increasing demands for software performance and reliability. “The things I do have a big impact on our software. My job is to ensure that we can meet the needs of even the largest retailers in the world and provide them with the added value that we promise.”
Alves feels that RELEX’s open operating culture leads to the best possible results. Management does not determine how things should be developed, but each team can define its own way of working. “The results are what matter. Here you can talk to anyone at any time and ask for help. The hierarchy is flat, which makes us agile,” Alves concludes.
*This article was originally published in November 2018 in IT Pro, the Finnish magazine TIVI’s career themed annex.
