THE SAPLUNA STORY

It all started with a desire to help others succeed

The roots of Sapluna go back to the 1990s. Our founder, Vesa Walden, has worked in events and project-based operations since 1994. Throughout his career, he has served as a producer, entrepreneur, educator, and developer across a wide variety of projects.

In the early years, the focus was on producing projects and developing personal expertise. Over time, however, this perspective changed. The focus gradually shifted toward helping customers, partners, and organizations achieve better results.

This change in thinking also led us into education. Vesa spent many years training event professionals through universities of applied sciences and various professional development programs. Alongside production work, this provided a unique window into how different organizations plan and execute projects.

The organizations were different, but their challenges were surprisingly similar. Talented people worked hard, yet projects often depended on the same key individuals. Information was scattered and ways of working varied significantly.

This sparked a deeper interest in understanding why projects function the way they do and how they could be improved through operating models rather than individual tools.

Opens Was a Necessary Learning Journey

The first version of Opens was delivered to a pilot customer in 2017. Initially, we developed Open Venue for venues and later Open Event for event organizers. Interest was strong from the beginning, and over the years approximately 150 organizations purchased Opens.

The customer base was diverse, including venues, festivals, cities, congregations, event organizers and other project-driven organizations. Every customer taught us something. The most important lessons rarely came from what worked. They came from what did not.

When customers encountered challenges, they also told us how they believed things should work. This kept our development grounded in reality rather than theory.

Over the years, we learned more about project operations and organizational behavior than we ever could have learned inside a meeting room.

The Biggest Insight Was Unexpected

The more customers we worked with, the clearer one thing became. The real problem was not a lack of tools. The real problem was the lack of a shared operating model. Every organization had developed its own way of working.

Over time, operations had evolved piece by piece. Individual problems had been solved, but rarely had the entire operating model been designed as one coherent whole. Organizations relied on forms, spreadsheets, emails, folders and systems, each solving only part of the challenge. The overall picture was fragmented.

Many practices worked well within their limited scope. Information moved manually between systems, responsibilities remained dependent on individuals, and project execution relied on a collection of disconnected solutions.

The problem was not that organizations had solved things incorrectly. They had simply solved them only partially. These challenges became most visible when new people, partners or suppliers joined a project. Everyone had their own practices and assumptions about how work should be managed. Without a shared operating model, projects became person-dependent.

Over time, we realized that the problem was not a lack of information. The problem was that execution depended too heavily on individuals. This realization eventually became Sapluna's mission:

To transform temporary operations from individual effort into shared and predictable execution.

A Customer Helped Us See the Next Step

A major turning point came through discussions with SuomiAreena. The feedback was simple but eye-opening. While Opens offered an effective site planning tool, the real need was not site planning. The real need was process management.

Programme information was collected through forms, processed in different systems, shared through email and eventually published online. Every individual step worked. The overall process did not.

For the first time, we saw project information as a continuous flow rather than isolated tasks. Based on this insight, we built the first version of Sapluna to manage the programme process from beginning to end within a single environment.

The solution worked. But during development we discovered something even more important. The problem was not the programme process itself. It was only one part of a much larger picture.

The same logic applied to volunteers, safety, marketing, partnerships, sales and virtually every other area of a project. This was the moment when the core idea behind today's Sapluna was born.

From a Tool to an Operating Model

This realization changed our thinking completely. We were no longer building software. We were building a new way to execute projects. Over time, this evolved into what we call the Model Production Method. At its core is a simple belief:

A successful project should not depend on an individual's memory, experience or personal working style.

Instead, it should rely on a shared operating model that anyone can learn, apply and pass on to the next person. Becoming a professional takes years.

Learning an operating model can happen much faster. That is why we believe the future of project execution lies in combining shared operating models, clear roles and technology.