Inside the CFO Office: Tommie Rudi, Skandia Greenpower

In our Inside the CFO Office series, we meet financial leaders who share their perspectives on leadership, strategy, and the evolving role of finance. This time, we extend our reach beyond the traditional CFO role – because some of the sharpest financial thinking comes from those whose responsibilities extend well beyond the finance function. Tommie Rudi, founder of Evendo Invest and CEO of Skandia Greenpower Group, is one of them.

Efficiency is not a strategy for Tommie, it is an instinct. From his very first venture, he has built, acquired, and turned around companies across energy retail, real estate, and beyond, guided by a deceptively simple conviction: most businesses are far more complicated than they need to be, and the ones that figure that out early win.

Today, at 37, he runs Evendo Invest, an investment company he has built over the past 15 years, with a portfolio spanning real estate development, energy retail, and several other ventures. The most visible of these is Skandia Greenpower, a Norwegian electricity retailer that Evendo Invest acquired approximately three years ago when the company was, in Tommie’s own words, in technical bankruptcy. Today, its market value now exceeds NOK 200 million and it is listed on Euronext Growth Oslo.

The transformation is not the result of complex financial engineering. It is the result of doing the obvious things – well, consistently, and faster than the competition.

The instinct that shaped a career

Long before Tommie became an investor, he ran a sales agency building and operating sales resources for other companies, with a particular focus on the energy sector. It was during those years, walking into large energy company headquarters, that a simple but lasting insight took hold.

“I remember visiting clients and coming into these big offices with so many people, and thinking: what are all these people actually doing? This is a subscription product. It’s a utility. If you can remove all customer friction, you should almost never need to speak to customers – only when something goes wrong, or when they have a question.”

The observation was straightforward. Energy retail is fundamentally a numbers game: acquire customers at the right cost, serve them efficiently, price correctly, and keep costs lean. The companies that were struggling, he noticed, had built their operations in an era before digitalization made lean possible – and had never meaningfully adapted.

“There is no magic to what we do,” he says matter-of-factly. “But we compete against many companies that carry an overhead structure from a different time – built when digitalization was not yet relevant. That is where we have the edge.”

Tommie Rudi, CEO of Skandia Greenpower Group

From the brink of bankruptcy to best-in-class efficiency

When Evendo Invest acquired its stake in Skandia Greenpower around three years ago, the situation was stark. The company was technically bankrupt, carrying an extremely high overhead and steep marginal costs per customer. The turnaround was not built on a complex strategic overhaul.

“I haven’t done anything different from what I have always done,” Tommie says. “The fundamentals: reduce costs, grow revenues. The obvious things.”

In practice, that meant rebuilding the cost structure from the ground up. The company went from a workforce of over thirty people to a core team of approximately ten – roughly half of whom are focused directly on sales. Despite the significant reduction in headcount, the business produces more today than it did before: more customers, faster response times, higher customer satisfaction, and a broader service offering.

“On paper, it should not be possible to cut that much on staffing and produce more than before,” he says. “But we have managed it. The right people stayed with me through it.”

A key enabler of that efficiency has been technology – including the adoption of Ropo One® for automated invoice and payment handling. “Ropo has not contributed to any downsizing,” Tommie clarifies, “but it has freed up time – for me, our CFO, and our customer service team – time we can now spend on more value-creating work rather than manual processing.”

Profitable today. Relevant tomorrow.

Ask Tommie about strategy and the answer is direct. While some competitors pursue growth without a clear path to profitability, and others compete by offering the most sophisticated product regardless of cost, Skandia has arrived at a different guiding principle.

“Our strategy is to be profitable today, while staying relevant tomorrow.”

It sounds straightforward. In practice, it serves as a daily filter for nearly every decision. Take app development: Tommie is deliberate about not chasing best-in-class functionality at any cost. “The cost difference between 95% functionality and 100% is tenfold,” he explains. “We invest enough that our customers are satisfied with the app – but we are not aiming to have the best in the industry. That would not be profitable today.”

The same logic guides the balance between short-term and long-term goals.

Tommie spends significant time mapping how the market is likely to look three, six, nine, and twelve months out – using that view as the basis for decisions that need to hold up over time.

“Balancing short- and long-term is an art. You use the strategy as a compass: we can adjust prices when it makes sense, but we cannot go too far – that is not relevant tomorrow. We cannot under-invest either, then we fall behind.”

He admits the forecast does not always land perfectly. “I am right sometimes. Not always,” he says with characteristic candor.

Digitalization as competitive advantage

Digitalization has been decisive to Skandia Greenpower’s transformation. Where competitors still carry large finance teams running manual processes, Skandia has automated income recognition and invoice handling almost entirely, freeing the CFO to focus on analysis and strategic work rather than data entry.

The company has also built its own customer onboarding software, enabling new customers to be processed as automatically as possible at scale. The impact is measurable: when Skandia Greenpower acquired Motkraft, a company that was unprofitable at the time of acquisition, the business became profitable from day one under Evendo Invest’s operational model.

“We have built tools that most competitors do not have,” Tommie says. “We spend far less time on onboarding and customer operations than they do. That difference goes straight to the bottom line.”

At the center of Skandia’s operations is UtilityCloud, combined with a tailored CRM and onboarding platform, and Ropo One® handling the invoicing lifecycle. Looking ahead, Tommie sees AI as the next step, but he is measured about how to approach it.

“We should not throw ourselves at AI just for AI’s sake. But I believe AI has real potential for our customer service – handling the thousands of repetitive inquiries we receive every year. Many of them are very similar. You can imagine the opportunity in answering simple, repetitive inquiries automatically,” he ponders.

“And take it further: the even bigger opportunity is to understand what customers in different segments are likely to ask and give them the information before they ever need to reach out. That would be even better.”

Data, instinct, and the one metric that matters

Tommie describes himself as someone who relies on data as actively as possible, while remaining honest about the limits of instinct. “I often have a gut feeling about how something should be solved,” he says. “But I am not too proud to change course if the data points the other way. I turn around when I need to. There is no shame in changing your mind.”

That data-driven discipline extends to risk management, where Tommie identifies regulatory change as the single largest risk in the energy sector, far outweighing market volatility.

“The biggest risk for us is changes in the regulatory framework: how authorities interpret requirements, new support schemes, billing rules. Those can shift the ground under your feet in ways that are hard to anticipate.”

A practical example: when Norway’s government electricity price support scheme was introduced, Skandia used Ropo One® to actively monitor payment behavior and outstanding credit days – tracking whether customer payment patterns were deteriorating as a result of the scheme’s complexity.

“Some customers did not fully understand that they had a power agreement in addition to the support scheme, or expected their bill to drop automatically. We tried to get ahead of it, giving customers the right information, through the right channel, as early as possible.”

When asked which metric sits above all others, the answer is immediate: cash flow. “That is the only thing that truly matters – everything else is ‘make-up’,” he says. “Free cash flow shows a company’s ability to invest in new projects or pay dividends.” There is an old saying he returns to: turnover is vanity, profit is sanity. At Skandia Greenpower, Tommie has built a company where that saying shows up in every decision.

Leading by letting go

With roughly half of Skandia Greenpower’s team working in sales, and a founder with a deep sales background, one might expect Tommie to be closely involved in day-to-day coaching and follow-up. He has taken a different approach.

“You’d think I’d be all over the sales team,” he says. “But I don’t need to be. My head of sales has been with me since long before Skandia. She knows exactly what she is doing. The same goes for our CTO, our CFO, and our head of customer service – she started in the customer service team when I joined the company and now runs the whole function herself. She has grown enormously.”

That trust is not accidental. It reflects a deliberate leadership philosophy built through decades of entrepreneurial experience: hire people who are self-driven, give them ownership over their areas, and then get out of the way.

“If the right people are in place and they feel genuine ownership over their areas, you do not need to manage the details. You can focus on where you add the most value.”

Our strategy is to be profitable today, while staying relevant tomorrow.

– Tommie Rudi, CEO, Skandia Greenpower

Advice built from experience

Tommie started his entrepreneurial journey at 21, and has not stopped since. “It is the sum of experiences, the good decisions and the bad ones, that makes you who you are,” he reflects.

He has been fortunate to work alongside many talented people along the way, picking up perspectives and insights from a wide range of collaborators. But rather than pointing to one mentor or one piece of advice, he points to a habit: working with people you genuinely enjoy, and being selective about which projects you take on.

“You spend a lot of time at work. That matters. Prioritize projects that are genuinely interesting, and work with people you enjoy. That makes everything easier, and it shows in the results.”

When it comes to advice for those starting out – aspiring founders, new leaders – his guidance is grounded and unsentimental:

“Trust people. Give them responsibility and freedom. Watch the cash flow. Profit matters, but cash flow is what keeps you alive. And do not be too absorbed by all the advice you receive along the way. Many people will have strong opinions about what you should and should not do, without necessarily understanding what it is you are building. Be selective about whose counsel you take seriously.”

Tommie Mikael Rudi

Born: 1989

Current position: CEO, Skandia Greenpower; Founder, Evendo Invest

Career: Entrepreneur since age 21. Founder and CEO of Evendo Invest, an investment company active in energy retail, real estate, and other sectors.

Previous experience: Ran a sales agency with a focus on the energy sector. Company-builder and turnaround investor across multiple industries.

Skandia Greenpower is a Norwegian energy group listed on Euronext Growth Oslo. The company operates the electricity brands Skandia Energi, Saga Energi, and Motkraft, delivering power and energy services to residential and business customers across Norway. Built on a technology-driven operating model with automated processes and digital platforms, Skandia Greenpower is one of the most cost-efficient players in the Norwegian energy retail market. Read more: Skandia Greenpower

Skandia Greenpower has been a valued Ropo client since 2024.

Ropo is the Nordic market leader and pioneer in invoicing technology, transforming the invoicing flow end-to-end. We help companies unify and streamline all invoicing processes to create a seamless workflow, providing full visibility, elevated customer experience, and improved control with a single overview. Committed to exceptional service and our one-platform strategy, we proudly support over 10,000 clients across Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Learn more about Ropo at ropo.com.

This article is part of Ropo’s CFO Insights and Trends series, featuring expert perspectives, key trends, inspiring financial leaders, and more.

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