What does VAID Product Builder do? Presenting Elena

Elena Yunolaynen has worked with business systems for the same customers for over a decade. In October, she transitioned into the role of VAID Product Builder at Virnex, where AI does the building and humans ensure that the right solution is being built. Her experience is extremely valuable in this new role.

From code to business logic

Elena has changed countries, languages, and job roles more than once: “For me, learning something new is more exciting than intimidating.”

Elena graduated with a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Kuopio and has worked as a consultant since 2006, joining Virnex in 2021. She lives in Lahti with her family and spends much of her free time supporting her daughter’s hobbies. When she has time for herself, she enjoys reading, exercising, and traveling.

Throughout her career, Elena has held several different roles. She first became familiar with the ERP world through coding. Early in her career, she built a web application for Epicor that was used to define dependencies between products.

“I realized that what interested me more than the code itself was the business logic: how to model product rules so that they are precise and reflect reality. As a mathematician, I enjoy turning complex systems into something logical and structured. ERP gives you a view of the entire company at once,” Elena reflects.

For the past ten years, Elena has primarily worked on Epicor upgrades and integrations for large Finnish companies operating internationally in the manufacturing and technical trade sectors. She has worked as a technical consultant, project manager, or both. In upgrade projects, she has been responsible for the entire process: planning, installation, customization, integration updates, testing, and technical documentation.

One notable aspect of Elena’s career is that she has carried out several consecutive upgrades for the same customers. She has followed the lifecycle of the same systems for over a decade, gaining valuable insights along the way. These long-term customer relationships also reflect trust: “Customers trust that I will take care of things and that they can come back to me even years later.”

Elena has learned to always ask what underlying need a customer’s request is intended to address before considering how to implement it.

“Every time, all customizations and integrations had to be reviewed, updated, and tested again. It makes you realize very concretely that every customization creates technical debt that must be paid again with each upgrade,” she explains.

An interpreter between business and AI

VAID is an AI platform developed by Virnex for building business systems, such as solutions for financial management, customer relationship management, inventory management, or product information management.

The VAID Product Builder role combines expertise in product management, software development, and service design. A Product Builder helps identify needs and translate them into specifications that can be used to build a solution. Decisions about how the process should operate, however, remain with the process owner. The Product Builder supports the entire journey from the customer's business problem to a reviewed and approved solution.

“First, I find out what problem needs to be solved and why, and how people actually do their work. It is important to understand what happens when something goes wrong. Then I write a specification detailed enough for VAID to build the solution. The specification also defines how we know that the solution is complete and correct. Finally, I verify that VAID has built the right thing,” Elena describes the process.

“I have followed the same process in ERP upgrades and integrations, just with different tools. When AI handles a large part of the development, what matters most is whether we have understood the right problem and whether we know how to verify the result,” she continues.

Elena does not write code herself in her new role, but she still needs to understand what is being built. She considers her greatest strength to be her understanding of both business and technology, and her ability to act as an interpreter between the two.

“I have worked as a developer, ERP consultant, and project manager, so I can look at the same issue from several perspectives: what the customer needs, how to build it, and how to bring the project to completion,” she explains.

Elena is currently using VAID to build Virnex’s own CRM system. The project addresses a real business need and is being carried out in the same way as a customer project. With her own colleagues as customers, feedback comes quickly.

“It is a good test because your own colleagues will certainly tell you directly whether something works or not,” Elena says with a smile.

Elena is also involved in customer projects alongside other VAID Product Builders.

How experience adds value to VAID projects

Elena identifies four areas where her experience is particularly valuable in VAID projects.

1. Exceptions: The standard scenario is easy to build. The real work lies in understanding what happens when an order is missing information, a customer cannot be identified, or a product code cannot be found. AI handles the standard workflow well, but exceptions must be identified and explicitly documented.

2. Modeling business logic: Rules must be defined precisely and without contradictions. The same applies to the specifications VAID uses to build solutions.

3. Testing: The criteria for determining when a solution is complete must be agreed upon before development begins.

4. Long-term thinking: After upgrading the same system for years, you understand the importance of designing solutions for their entire lifecycle, even when development is fast.

In Elena’s experience, the problems in ERP projects are rarely technical. Requirements and exceptions often only become clear during testing, or requests are implemented without questioning why they are needed.

“These things are even more important with VAID. When development is fast, a poor specification does not result in slow progress but in a solution that works technically while doing the wrong thing. A technically functional solution is not the same as a solution that is right for the business,” Elena emphasizes.

Elena uses three tests to determine whether she has correctly understood a customer's process: Can she describe the process back to the customer in their own words without being corrected? Can she explain what happens when something does not go as expected? Can she write test cases and acceptance criteria that the customer approves?

“If I cannot explain how to verify that the solution is correct, I have not yet understood the process.”

The same attention to detail is evident in everything she does: “I do not approve a solution just because it appears to work.”

When specifications become the most important deliverable

Coming from a development background, what surprised Elena most was how little coding the Product Builder role involves. Another surprise was how familiar the work still felt. The process from customer needs to specifications, implementation, testing, and approval is the same as in ERP projects. Only the development phase changes.

The biggest difference from her previous work is that everything must be explicitly documented.

“In ERP upgrades, I had known my customers’ systems for years. A lot of tacit knowledge was in my head. When I did the work myself, I could fill in any gaps along the way. With VAID, everything has to be written down,” Elena explains.

When everything is documented, knowledge no longer remains in one person’s head. The solution is built based on the specifications and verified against them. When a working version can be shown to the customer earlier, misunderstandings can also be identified sooner.

The way of working is also changing. Previously, Elena was used to fixing problems herself as soon as she spotted them. Now, she describes the problem in enough detail for VAID to solve it. During her years working with Epicor, she approached systems in terms of their limitations: what could be done with standard functionality, what required customization, and what was not possible at all. Now, the starting point can be what the customer actually needs.

In upgrade projects, discussions with customers often focused on the system itself: what changes the new version would introduce, which customizations would need to be rebuilt, and how much it would cost. Now, the focus can shift more toward what the business needs and why. The customer's own people are involved from the very beginning, and decisions are made early in the project.

Expert advice for a business system modernization project

Elena has three pieces of advice for companies considering modernizing their business systems.

“Think twice about every customization, because it adds costs with every system upgrade. Keep the core ERP system as close to standard as possible and build your own unique processes around it. Start with the problem, not the system. And make sure your own people have time to participate in the project. No system or AI knows how work is actually done in your organization,” she advises.

According to Elena, building systems with VAID is particularly suitable for organizations that have a clearly defined problem and processes that are so specific to their business that off-the-shelf software cannot accommodate them without extensive customization. The organization must also have people who understand these processes and can make decisions about how they should work.

What Elena looks forward to most in her work with VAID is taking a customer's problem all the way from the initial need to a solution that the customer approves.

“That requires both AI and people. AI can build solutions, but it needs human knowledge of how the customer actually operates, where the problems lie, and what happens in exceptional situations. VAID brings these two together: AI does the building, and people make sure that the right solution is being built.”