The new year began for us in the home office, because of coronavirus. We already knew about organising things from home from the year before, but it was still something of an adjustment at first. With fixed online meetings such as our «good morning» and «good afternoon» we tried to give our day some structure and not let our social life together seize up completely. Despite the regular online exchanges we were very happy when, at the beginning of February, we were all finally allowed back into the office.
From then on things really got going. Above all, our team was enriched this year by two new colleagues in marketing and IT. The two settled in very quickly, supported us with all their energy straight away and are already impossible to imagine our team without.
Accordingly, our product was also able to undergo a good deal of development this year. At the beginning of the year we started a pilot project with Renggli AG on the manufacturing feature, which includes specific deployment plans for production. Our collaboration was marked by a very intensive and productive exchange, so that the feature is already ready for use. Beyond that we were able to implement further new functions, such as individual user profiles and a new capacity model in which the assignments created in deployment planning are automatically taken into the calculation of capacity planning.
And in the area of Vanillaplan Fair we also made significant progress. We added several further interfaces via Vanillaplan Fair. And alongside drawing up the business plan, towards the end of the year we were even able to complete the website for Vanillaplan Fair and take the first steps towards looking for investors.
With regard to our trade fair visits too, 2022 was a very successful year. It began - somewhat bumpily - with Swissbau, which was initially postponed from February to May because of coronavirus measures. Even though it took place on a slightly smaller scale than planned, that did nothing to detract from its quality. Our stand was in the Innovation Lab, the area for start-ups, where we were able to make many exciting contacts.
This was followed by digitalBau in Cologne, where - despite delays on the German railways - we gained many interesting impressions of digitalisation in the German construction industry.
The Spenglertag in September was finally the premiere for our robot arm Armin. When assembling him beforehand, our development department was able to demonstrate not only its programming skills but also its practical ones - ultimately with great success. Thanks to Armin and his help in presenting our deployment planning game, the Spenglertag was a fine success.
The crowning conclusion of our trade fair visits was Holz 2022 in Basel in October. We had so many cool and stimulating conversations that by the end of the week we had barely any voice left, but a great many new prospective customers.
For even more external input we took part in the Startup Academy's scale-up support programme. Here we were able to attend various modules from different areas such as marketing, company organisation, finance, sales etc., which we found very interesting.
We also look back very fondly on this year's office outing, on which we immersed ourselves completely in the world of construction. We visited a roofing business, Habisreutinger Gebäudehülle GmbH, and a timber processing business, Renggli AG, and were able to gain fascinating insights into their everyday work and their production methods.
This summer we finally devoted ourselves to a project that had been planned for some time.
But that will remain a secret for a little while yet. So stay tuned and be the first to find out in the new year what it is all about.
We are at the end of the year and wish you all a peaceful Christmas and a good start to 2023!
