A warehouse is no longer just an operational unit — it is a strategic investment. That was the central premise of Laoseis 2026, a conference organised by Äripäev at the Tallinn Zoo Environmental Education Centre. IDsys CEO Anton Mesila took part in the closing panel discussion on the role of digitalisation in today’s logistics and business processes.

If the whole day and that conversation could be compressed into one thought, it would be this: before investing in new technology or new square metres, you need to measure ten times and cut once.

What was Laoseis 2026?

Laoseis 2026 put a pressing question in front of Estonian manufacturing and logistics companies: is your warehouse supporting company growth, or slowing it down? With the economy, real estate market and technology changing faster than ever, leaders face real decisions about where to invest, what to develop, and which solutions to choose.

The day covered four main themes:

• The economic outlook — Swedbank’s chief economist and a real estate expert opened up forecasts and the state of warehouse and production property markets.
• The next generation of warehouses — the rise of regional logistics hubs, solutions outside Tallinn, and the growing role of smaller warehouses.
• Real-world case studies — companies shared what worked when building new logistics centres and rolling out systems, and what they would do differently today.
• Technologies that work today — ERP, automation, robotics and warehouse equipment trends.

One thread ran through the entire day: the question is no longer whether to digitalise, but how to do it right. That framing matters — because the wrong choice is expensive and slow to undo.

Anton Mesila on the panel: measure ten times, cut once

The closing panel tackled the question “Can today’s logistics and business processes operate without digitalisation?“. The panel brought together IDsys CEO Anton Mesila and Aleksandr Miina, Commercial Director and Partner at Lean Digital.

The conversation revolved around questions that come up in IDsys’s client work every day: where do you actually start with digitalisation? What are the most common mistakes in rolling out systems? Why don’t existing solutions always deliver the value that was expected?

Throughout the discussion, Anton returned to one principle — whether you are building a new logistics centre or rolling out another technology solution, the thorough measuring happens before, not after.

“The first prerequisite for any successful digitalisation project is a pre-analysis. Only on that foundation can you put together a solution and a cost estimate, judge whether the project is feasible for the company, and run a proper return-on-investment analysis.”

Anton Mesila, CEO of IDsys

That wasn’t a slogan. It was the reason IDsys offers a separate digital data flow pre-analysis service — and why that service is, most often, the right first step for any serious digitalisation project.

Why IDsys does pre-analyses

The pre-analysis is a detailed foundation document that gives the client clarity and a thorough overview of their current state before a single technology decision is made. It does two things:

1. Assesses what the client actually needs and which kind of solution genuinely fits their situation.
2. Locks in the truly required and most optimal technology solution — avoiding overspending both in implementation and in ongoing operation.

Put differently: the pre-analysis is the “measure ten times” part that turns the later investment into a justified strategic step, rather than an expensive experiment.

IDsys’s pre-analysis follows five steps:

1. Defining the scope — which processes are in scope.
2. AS-IS mapping — BPMN models and interviews with key people to document the current state.
3. Technology analysis — assessing the applicability of RFID, AI and machine vision in the client’s specific context.
4. TO-BE modelling — modelling the optimised processes together with the hardware and software.
5. Report — functional and non-functional requirements, a solution overview and cost estimates.

The deliverable is a document that says clearly: here are your bottlenecks, here are your options, and here is what each one brings. No need to experiment, no need to “see if this works” — the decision is informed.

And that was exactly Anton’s point in the panel: the biggest mistakes in digitalisation don’t come from bad technology, but from decisions made without a solid foundation.

Closing

Laoseis 2026 confirmed what IDsys sees every day: Estonian companies are no longer asking whether to digitalise. The question is how to make choices that support long-term growth, rather than adding to a post-hoc list of corrections.

If your company is planning its next step in warehouse, production or supply chain digitalisation, start with measuring.

→ Learn more about the digital data flow pre-analysis service