Sanoma Group

As a front-runner in media and learning solutions, Sanoma has an impact on the lives of millions every day: enabling teachers to excel at developing the talents of every child, providing consumers with engaging content, and offering unique marketing solutions to business partners around the world.

With operations in ten countries, including Finland, the Netherlands, and Poland, Sanoma had net sales of 900 million euros in 2019, while employing approximately 3,500 people.

Alder & Sound have been working together with Sanoma on transfer pricing and economic analysis for a number of years. Taru Vilppula, head of Tax Nordic, at Sanoma, describes their way of working together as straightforward, flexible, and humane. “Alder & Sound really know their customers”, Vilppula relates. “Through all these years, we’ve been able to have more or less the same contact people working with us, which means everything runs smoothly”. For Vilppula it has been important to have a go-to person who is easy to approach, no matter how small the concern. She points out that A&S experts can be phoned up at any time, and calls and messages are always acknowledged and answered. “As a customer, it’s really important that I don’t need to be constantly trying to get hold of them – I can be sure that my case is in the process of being dealt with.”

According to Vilppula, this customer-oriented approach can be seen in everything A&S do.

They speak the same language as the customer, and their contact person has the necessary experience to relate to your situation and compare it to other similar cases. The solutions they find are always ones that really fit our business.

In this way, Vilppula believes the solid experience of Alder & Sound’s experts translates into effective tailor-made solutions for the customer.

Vilppula also praises the practical nature of Alder & Sound’s solutions: “they don’t settle for merely pointing out the legal clauses, they also make it very clear what the precise effect of them will be on our business.” This also makes her job easier, when it comes to communicating about these matters within Sanoma.

“When it involves one of the best-known brands in Finland, not to mention one of the country’s most respected tax professionals, there are definitely high expectations about working together”, notes Petteri Rapo, partner and head of transfer pricing at A&S. “And I am really proud to say that we have been able to meet those requirements and to add value in precisely the way we intended – by being an adviser that is not only reliable and easy to approach, but also intelligible. The open and functional communication we have fostered throughout the course of our close long-term working relationship has brought mutual synergy and benefits to both companies over the years, and it has enabled a range of services to be specifically tailor-made for Sanoma’s changing needs”, adds Rapo. “The best reward for a job well done is a successful customer and happy contact person.” 

This interview was conducted in March 2020 by the communication agency, Aava & Bang. 
Photo: Grisha Bruev, Shutterstock 

Our transfer pricing team will help our customers grow, communicate, internationalize, plan, succeed, control their risks, and take care of their compulsory obligations. Together with our global partner network we make sure that our customers can focus on their international business free of any unnecessary worry or unreasonable bureaucracy, and in the knowledge that they are not taking any risks. At the same time, we make sure that there is a suitably effective and meaningful internal process set up to address every situation.

Our tax & legal team will provide a full range of high quality integrated tax and legal services to our clients. From planning to implementation, our experienced professionals serve clients of all sizes and forms by delivering turnkey solutions to serve their specific needs.

How may we help you? Read more about our services here. 

We want to be a partner and a trusted advisor for our customers on all the important questions. Assignment teams are always set up to meet the individual needs of the customer, so you will have a named contact person to provide you with access to all of our wide-ranging services and our global partner network.