TOP ESTONIAN ENTERPRISES

Photo: Toomas Tuul
IAN JOHN ALEXANDER PLENDERLEITH
actly going on underground, we can’t see this
through. Imagine that the earth’s crust is in constant
movement and therefore unstable, everything
is under the ground and no one actually
knows what is going on there. Tallinn has approximately
thousand kilometres of underground
water pipes. Separate leakage inspectors work
in our company who view personally where the
leakages could be,“ Plenderleith tells.
At the end of the last year also the EBRD loan
was refinanced, according to the manager this
was a challenge and not at all an easy undertaking.
For carrying out the network expansions,
the loan of 20 million euros was taken
from the Nordic Investment Bank.
The satisfaction of the employees is also a key
question. When Plenderleith came to the company
to be a financial manager, much was done
here already and no structural changes were
necessary. During the privatisation of the company
650 employees worked there, less than 350,
i.e. less than half had remained when Plenderleith
started to work in the company in 2004.
“Here many difficult decisions were made. When
I came last time, I found the operating team,
everything functioned. Our employees are today
quite satisfied, last year we saw for the first time
that the level of the satisfaction of employees
also clearly increased. Surely, much work was
done in this question and now it could be seen
that it has paid off,“ the manager is satisfied.
The company’s manager tells about his real
passion – client service. I have always been active
in the financial sector, but actually my passion
is client service. I love client service. If we
take the key indicators, such as water quality –
this has improved. But if someone comes and
says that my water smells strange – what to do?
Then I can ask what colour it is and how does it
smell. We can examine, show interest. Always
one can ask whether water pressure is all right,
whether water can freely flow and after having
heard the client feedback I can prepare my own
business plan and all other plans and decide
what to do with the problem of this sector.“
In ideal world Plenderleith does not want that
any of the clients would contact them at all.
Everything should ideally function so that the
people do not even notice the provision of the
service. Tallinna Vesi is inevitably in the privileged
status in Tallinn and the company’s manager
confirms that they understand their
special position. “We try to deal with everyone
the same way. We want to be the best service
provider in the Baltic countries. We work towards
this aim.“ •
TALLINNA VESI AS 2008:
Sales (th EEK) 719,923
Change in sales 111 %
Net profit (th EEK) 295,968
Change in net profit 106.5 %
Number of employees 317
Investments (th EEK) 306,257
Return on equity 23.5 %
Photo: Toomas Tuul
65