This customer story highlights experiences from users of our Swiss platform, politik.ch. Introduced in 2018, politik.ch is the precursor to SAVOIRR, offering comprehensive services related to Swiss national and cantonal legislative data. Discover why customers trust our Swiss tool.
Challenge
Axpo is the largest energy company in Switzerland. As such, Axpo is constantly confronted with political and legal issues that can have a significant impact on the company. This, combined with the tendency towards greater legislative cadence, makes it essential for Axpo to anticipate regulations as early as possible. And not only at the federal level, but also in the cantons, where often federal requirements have to be implemented.
In this context, the previous system of Axpo’s team reached its limits. Thomas Porchet, Head of Energy Policy Switzerland, remembers: “I was working with a huge Excel spreadsheet and a 90-page Word document that I updated by hand once a month. I had to go through all the federal and cantonal websites one by one and update the changes – without knowing whether anything had changed at all.” He could hardly delegate this work because not all cantonal sources are structured in the same way and they really aren’t self-explanatory.
Axpo was therefore looking for a way to simplify this process. The main aim was to relieve the public affairs employees of routine tasks in favour of more complex activities.
Solution
The project team then compared various software solutions for monitoring and managing political data. Besides politanalytics.com, also those that promised even more sources. However, none of the other products delivered the federal and cantonal data in the same quality and depth as politanalytics.com does. The cooperation with politanalytics.com was equally convincing: “We noticed that there is a committed and ambitious team at work here, that takes customer requests seriously,” says Alena Weibel, Head Public Affairs & Media Relations.
There is a committed and ambitious team at work here, that takes customer requests seriously.
Alena Weibel, Head of Public Affairs & Media Relations
Once the decision in favour of politanalytics.com was made, one last problem had to be solved: Axpo’s acquisition process requires that any software used, must meet the same security criteria – regardless of whether it’s the control software for a power plant or politanalytics.com. “I was surprised by this last hurdle – but together we overcame it!” says Elise Beauverd, Research Associate Public Affairs. And she adds with a laugh: “Your slogan should be: politanalytics.com – as safe as a Swiss nuclear power station!”
Result
Today, Axpo relies entirely on politanalytics.com and its Excel lists have disappeared. Monitoring is now constant and ongoing instead of just once a month. “I used to spend two working days a month on political monitoring,” says Thomas Porchet. “Now I get a daily summary in my mailbox and see immediately if I need to take action. That takes just five minutes. And I can rely on it.”
I see immediately if I need to take action.
Thomas Porchet, Head of Energy Policy Switzerland
Elise Beauverd adds, “I often have to send reports to our stakeholders. This used to be tedious and meant a lot of manual work. With politanalytics.com, I create the reports in a quarter of the time.” Of course, not everything worked out exactly as they had imagined right from the start. But through the close cooperation, the application was developed more and more according to their wishes.
Creating a report takes only half the time with politik.ch.
Elise Beauverd, Research Associate Public Affairs
They have also taken certain challenges as an opportunity to think about internal processes and have now even come up with optimised solutions. For example, the Public Affairs team is working on better networking within the company, which is made much easier by politanalytics.com.
Axpo’s Public Affairs team agrees: “Our way of working has become much more pleasant thanks to politik.ch!"
