Review of the year 2023

No masks, no social distancing rules, no home office - the year 2023 started and, for a change, remained completely free of coronavirus influences! Instead, we welcomed the new year in the first few weeks with our new website. Designed in-house and programmed by an external agency, this was the first time in our company's history that we were able to call a truly professional website our own. We were delighted, but we didn't stop there - we immediately set about redesigning our mobile app. Also with a new design, but above all with the practical function for transmitting file attachments for construction plans, images and documents, this was also launched in the first quarter. And with that, the reorganisation of our design was complete!

Of course, this was not the only development we achieved. However, the "we" also had to be redefined again this year: Because both our IT team and the marketing department each got double reinforcements. The four of them settled in with us very quickly and are now an integral part of our team.

But now to our developments on the technical side:

We were particularly pleased that we were able to finalise the deployment plans for production in collaboration with Renggli AG and that they are now already being used successfully for parts and element production. We also upgraded the mobile app we launched at the beginning of the year: the tour feature now allows you to view the various project locations of the day on the map and easily navigate from one location to the next. We have also worked on the Vanillaplan display board: this has been expanded from a one-day to a five- or seven-day view. Cheers to early planning! We have already laid the foundations for another project this year and are very much looking forward to working on it with the full strength of the entire IT team: our time and attendance recording system.

But it wasn't just the development department that was busy this year, the marketing team was also able to get things moving:

As a joint marketing IT project, which resulted in a nice collaboration in addition to our skills exchange, our onboarding wizard to facilitate the test phase with Vanillaplan is ready for use next year. Through guided tours in our demo, Vanillaplan testers are guided through the tool and can familiarise themselves with it. Creating the tours was great fun and brought us closer to our own tool in a completely different way.

We were able to realise another project that had been close to our hearts for some time with the creation of our "What are you working on right now?" brochure. We compiled interviews about everyday life in various construction professions into a brochure with the aim of getting young people interested in an apprenticeship in the construction industry. We were delighted when the brochure was disseminated throughout our community and also adopted by a number of careers advice centres throughout Switzerland.

Last but not least, we were able to record another editorial success this year: An article about Vanillaplan was published in the Allgemeine Bauzeitung, Germany's most widely read construction magazine.

And we didn't let things slide in terms of trade fair visits either: it started with KAEFER in Leipzig, where we were able to present our tool and take our first steps into Germany. We continued with appli-tech in Lucerne, where we were even able to conduct an interview with the organisers and take a look behind the scenes of trade fair planning. We attended BAU in Munich, LIGNA in Hanover and the IHF in Innsbruck in varying combinations of people, so that we were all able to expand our trade fair experience and gain a wide range of impressions.

In addition to the trade fairs, we attended the Lignum Basel timber construction conference, where we learnt a lot of interesting things about timber construction, and were able to pass on our own knowledge about resource planning in the timber construction podcast.

Last but not least, there was no shortage of team activities this year. Our office trip to uptownBasel and the neighbouring data centre allowed us to fully immerse ourselves in the digital world - outside of our work for once. Finally, we brought the year to a close together with a cosy raclette evening in our office and the aforementioned Christmas tapas.

We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2024!