The Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation (Tekes) and Finpro, a provider of internationalisation advisory services, will merge into a new operator named Business Finland.

Business Finland will gather all services related to the promotion of innovation funding, export, investment, and tourism under one roof, said an official press release.

About 600 experts will be transferred to the new organisation.

Business Finland will intensify its co-operation with the foreign ministry and the heads of missions abroad will assume wider responsibility for the entire field also as regards to export and internationalisation of companies.

Together with the diplomatic missions, Business Finland will form a stronger Team Finland network globally.

The government outlined the reform in its strategy session on Monday. The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment will commence the preparations for establishing the new operator immediately.

The objective is that Business Finland will begin its operations at the beginning of 2018.

With the help of the reform, it will be possible to take into account the entire lifecycle of the growth and internationalisation of companies.

A uniform service pathway will begin from the development of products, services, and business models and continue to the introduction of the innovations in the markets, and there will be no break in the chain at any point, Economic Affairs Minister Mika Lintilä told a press conference.

The achievements of Tekes and Finpro have been good, but by merging them, it will be possible to reduce the partial overlapping and free people to work in the field, Lintilä explained.

The reform is aimed at allocating a larger number of people to customer services both in Finland and abroad. The responsibilities of the units of Tekes and Finpro – Export Finland, Invest Finland and Visit Finland – will not change in the reform but the way to organise and provide the services will be harmonised.

The purpose of the change is to improve the services provided for customers – growth-oriented companies aiming at internationalisation. The customers will in future be served by one organisation instead of two. The new model will be one step closer to Team Finland’s promise of a one-stop-shop service, said Lintilä.

“The reform will enable moving the focus of resources in export promotion from Finland to a network abroad, like our most successful competitors have done,” said Foreign Trade and Development Minister Kai Mykkänen, who also addressed the press meet.

At the same time, the importance of export promotion will increase in the work of embassies by strengthening the role of the ambassadors as country managers of Team Finland and, on the other hand, the role of Business Finland in steering the content of export promotion as regards the resources of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mykkänen said.

These changes are part of the Team Finland reform that was launched last autumn. The aim of the reform is to support the government’s objective to double the exports of small and medium-sized enterprises by 2020.