Cherry picks and provides the best leaders in Finland – and worldwide through WIL Group

Cherry is an agile Interim Management player renewing the leadership market in Finland with its innovative service portfolio. Since last year, Cherry has also been an active member of the WIL Group.

The Finnish interim management market has increasingly grown during the past decade. Today the market is likewise competitive with few major players and multiple other fragmented service providers.

Cherry Group Ltd was established in 2022. In only two years’ time the newcomer has taken a substantial share of the growing market. The company is already Finland’s biggest domestically owned, purely interim management focused player.

Cherry’s service offering is highly comprehensive. It covers all aspects of interim needs, all industry fields and all strategic corporate functions as well.

Cherry Pool makes a difference

“One of our competitive advantages is Cherry Pool, the unique roster of the best leaders who want to contribute to different businesses with their skills and competences - as a service. These highly experienced and qualified business executives have a proven track record in senior management. We, as partners, have handpicked them thanks to our individual interviews and other background information. This selection process is the essence of our brand, and it also differentiates Cherry from other players”, tells Samppa Seppälä, Managing Partner and Founding Partner of Cherry.

The carefully built Cherry Pool already includes more than 250 members and is constantly evolving. This Pool of ready recognised top leaders brings another advantage to our clients – the speed beyond comparison.

“We provide typically 2 – 4 strong candidates to any leadership position within 48 hours, with validated interest, experience and capabilities.”

Cherry Pinterim® challenges executive search

“In interim management time is money. We think it should be as crucial when filling permanent leadership positions. Nowadays too many companies waste 6 – 9 months in traditional and expensive executive search. As a solution, we have launched an innovative service, Cherry Pinterim® (i.e. Permanent Interim), which combines the benefits of interim management and permanent employment. The client gets a top qualified person right away and after a few months, when both sides are assured of the perfect match, he or she will be permanently employed.”

“This new service, which significantly saves recruitment time and money, has been very successful among our clientele and has also raised a lot of interest more widely”, concludes Samppa.

Leading knowledge even for ESG

Beyond the CEO’s, CFO’s, CHRO’s, CCO’s, CSO’s, CMO’s, CTO’s, CDO’s and CPMO’s Cherry provides also top leaders who are specialised in planning and running ESG capabilities and IT projects. A seasoned interim manager can make a crucial difference when building new capabilities or executing business critical projects in an organisation.

“Right now, tens of thousands of companies within EU are proceeding to comply with the newly established sustainability standards. This CSRD based regulation requires these companies to report their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) practises in detail. We have noticed that an experienced interim specialist is often the most efficient solution to enhance a company’s ESG practises”, says Petri Kujala, another Founding Partner of Cherry.

“Initiating a corporate sustainability reporting is an example of a project which will turn into a daily practise. During the building phase, important knowledge transfer will also take place, and at a certain point in time the experienced interim manager is no longer needed in the organisation. It is part of the interim management’s beauty that the company does not need to hire her or him permanently”, Petri points out.

Critical IT project cannot fail

As another example of Cherry’s offering specialties, Ilari Kallio, also Founding Partner of Cherry, highlights IT project management which requires outstanding skills and experience.

“Companies often face situations in which starting or completing an IT project requires specific expertise rapidly and only for a limited time. Typically, such cases are renewal of business-critical IT systems, major organisational changes, integration projects in mergers and acquisitions, as well as strategic digitalisation projects.”

“A proven interim manager brings demonstrated skills and a strong experience of similar projects to the IT project team, which is a huge advantage in this fast- changing technology world. He or she can save significantly short- and long-term costs through efficient project scoping and vendor selection, often outweighing multiple times the costs of the interim manager. Another advantage is that the interim manager can start immediately, saving valuable time and capturing project benefits and ROI faster compared to the traditional recruitment process. When a company hires an interim manager, it pays only the actual effort during the project. This eliminates the risks and costs of long-term recruitment”, Ilari sums up.

Cherry partners are ready whenever and wherever you are

“With the unique Cherry Pool, our comprehensive service offering, the working partners’ extensive senior management background and the Cherry brand – which really stands out in the interim market – we see a lot of growth opportunities both in Finland and abroad”, confirm all the three Partners in the Cherry office in Helsinki capital area.

“And we are very committed to run new international projects with our dear colleagues throughout the WIL Group. In addition to helping our cross-border customers and providing further opportunities to our interim leaders, we want to help foreign companies to enter and grow in the Finnish market. So, whenever you need the best leaders in Finland or in any of the other 37 countries covered by the WIL Group companies, just give us a call!”