3 min read
Oomi, one of the most ambitious players in the Finnish energy sector, faced the dual challenge of navigating a massive market consolidation while evolving its robust digital infrastructure to support rapid growth. To unlock new revenue streams and build upon its existing operational strengths, Oomi partnered with Columbia Road. By combining a website renewal with agile growth operations, we successfully established a high-velocity experimentation culture, delivered immediate positive ROI on electricity sales, and built a scalable digital toolkit to launch Oomi's new mobile business line.
Starting point: Addressing energy market shifts through a targeted digital growth pilot
Oomi's business was expanding rapidly, driven by significant mergers and acquisitions, including the integration of Lumme Energia. While this consolidation positioned Oomi as a major force in the Finnish energy market, it also required integrating diverse, highly successful business practices. At the same time, the company was undergoing a planned technological transition, moving from its traditional industry-standard ERP to a modern cloud-based CRM, ecommerce, and portal architecture.
This transitional period created a unique opportunity. Supported by executive-level sponsorship and a strong ambition to create a growth culture, Oomi wanted to build on its structured, department-specific expertise and move towards a highly collaborative model for digital service development. With a solid existing web presence, the business sought to establish a framework to rapidly scale commercial growth across both its core electricity business and its emerging product lines. We were brought in to help turn this technological evolution into an active commercial engine.
Our approach: Aligning cross-functional growth teams to unify internal capabilities
To bridge the gap between Oomi's robust technology and its commercial objectives, we established a unified, cross-functional team. Rather than working in separate specialised tracks for web development, marketing automation, and sales, we combined these strengths into a single, cohesive team focused on a shared goal: acquiring new customers and securing energy contracts.
Impact: Generating measurable commercial value through digital channels
The growth operations methodology proved its value immediately, establishing a successful precedent for the wider organisation.
Tangible commercial results
The initial electricity sales pilot achieved a clearly positive ROI within its first two months, validating the business case for digital growth operations. In parallel, the marketing automation track successfully engaged high-intent users within Oomi's existing customer base to capture immediate opportunities:
- Conversion optimisation: We implemented high-intent tactics, including abandoned-cart reminders and exit-intent pop-ups, which recaptured revenue directly within the digital purchase funnel.
- Cross-selling: By leveraging strategic cross-selling and upselling flows, we introduced the new Oomi Mobiili product to the existing electricity customer base, maximising customer lifetime value.
Technical and brand empowerment
Building on the solid foundation of Oomi's original web presence, we acted as an end-to-end partner for the complete renewal of Oomi's website. We designed and built a highly flexible, scalable digital toolkit while also taking learnings and testing ideas in growth streams. This solution has enabled Oomi to maintain brand consistency during an ongoing, real-time brand renewal, rapidly expand its web presence, and design and execute conversion experiments entirely independently.
Highlights and lessons learned: Building cross-team momentum and embedding system care
Scaling a growth model during a period of intense organisational change provided several valuable insights for both teams:
- Shared ownership accelerates alignment: Navigating a major acquisition meant working with teams in transition. Setting up cross-functional teams with shared commercial goals, rather than project-based deliverables, united different operational strengths and kept projects moving forward smoothly.
- Speed and agility deliver immediate value in automation: In fast-moving markets, starting with focused campaigns can build immediate momentum. Designing and deploying simple, high-impact marketing automation flows quickly proved highly valuable while the long-term data architecture was being finalised.
-
Coaching is as vital as code: True digital maturity requires capability building. By focusing on teaching and coaching Oomi's team throughout the process, we ensured that the growth engine could run independently of external partners.
The way forward: Scaling commercial growth pilots into sustained growth in different business lines
The ultimate goal of the partnership is to weave a data-driven growth culture deep into Oomi’s daily operations. The pilot has already scaled to two dedicated growth teams, with plans to expand this methodology across additional business lines to form a true company-wide growth system.
To ensure long-term sustainability, Oomi is progressively taking ownership of key roles within these growth teams. We are structured to support this transition, with Oomi's internal experts increasingly running the day-to-day operations. Moving forward, our continuous care model will focus on protecting and optimising this digital foundation, utilising advanced data processes and AI to drive the next wave of growth in energy and mobile.