Success Story Smart ICT

«Improved member services and enhanced productivity.»

Vincent Riesen, Director CCI

The story in brief:

With an outdated IT system that left an awful lot to be desired in terms of ergonomics, the Valais Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s everyday work was becoming increasingly tedious. But the system turned out to be fatally flawed during an attempt to launch a new CRM solution, making the task impossible. What was the result? Weeks of work and thousands of francs invested – all for nothing. Faced with such a dismal situation, the Director took it upon himself to find a new quality partner.

The Valais Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) plays a key role in regional development – after all, it’s a major player in the canton’s business community. Mr Riesen, the CCI’s director, devotes his energies to offering reliable services and innovative solutions to the 470 member companies and the 26 business associations represented by the organisation. By opting to place its trust in Swisscom’s Smart ICT solution, the CCI put key tools in place to leverage synergies and optimise its members’ involvement and influence.

Since his IT system was a somewhat archaic setup that had been custom developed for the CCI a few years earlier, Mr Riesen was beginning to feel its limitations: “The program was cumbersome and left an awful lot to be desired in terms of ergonomics.” The shortcomings of this “homemade” system became all too apparent when the director wanted to press ahead with building on his marketing strategy by preparing a CRM solution to manage the Chamber’s data. Despite weeks of waiting and investing thousands of francs, the conclusion was clear: the CRM solution was incompatible and didn’t work on the servers. 

Dismayed, the CCI didn’t know how to turn its project into a reality and recognised that its IT solution’s limitations were impeding its business development operations. It was then – at an event co-organised by Swisscom for members in the canton – that Mr Riesen discovered Swisscom’s Smart ICT solution. The director decided to take the plunge, since he’d been won over by both the services and the professionalism of the service provider in charge of project implementation.

Valais Chamber of Commerce and Industry – profile

  • Umbrella association for Valais’s economy
  • Helps to protect companies and safeguard jobs
  • 470 member companies

The project with Swisscom

  • Optimal basis for new forms of work
  • Affordable costs for SMEs
  • All solutions from a single source

 

The products used

Smart ICT

With Smart ICT’s IT outsourcing, your SME can rely on workstations equipped with the latest technology. Our modern IT-on-demand solution not only gives you flexibility but also continues to grow with your requirements, providing a reliable, optimally coordinated package of Internet, telephony, network and IT services.

A transition that’s paying of

From that point onwards, everything was an absolute breeze. The transition went smoothly with the full support of Moos Yvan Sàrl, Swisscom’s service provider that was recently renamed adiatic SA and that played a key role in successfully completing the data migration process from the old, obsolete and abandoned system to the new one: “We left the offices on the Friday evening and everything was up and running for us coming back in on the Monday morning. We owe them a great deal,” remarked the CCI director..

vincent-riesen-portrait

«I can now concentrate completely on my task at hand – creating value for our members.»

Vincent Riesen, Director CCI

The CCI didn’t have long to wait for the first noteworthy changes. Processes have been made a great deal easier – simply by switching from a system made up of about 15 databases to a single digitalised solution. “The system is very powerful and we now have secure access to all our data from absolutely anywhere,” affirmed Mr Riesen. 

The timing of the transition was something of a happy coincidence, as it took place in early March 2020 when the coronavirus was spreading across Europe. It meant that staff could then work efficiently from home. Since the CRM solution works perfectly with cloud hosting, the CCI can now implement its digitalisation strategy more smoothly and offer its members high quality online services.

Promising prospects for the future

The director is now extremely positive about the future and is already preparing to integrate new software that will help boost productivity and automate many marketing activities. “We’ll be able to expand our services, for instance, by giving our members access to more documents and offering them more targeted, interest based information. By getting to know each profile better, we’ll undoubtedly create spectacular synergies,” continued Mr Riesen. 

The Valais CCI’s story is a good example of the opportunities that the Smart ICT solution can offer small organisations. Companies can consider new business models when they benefit from a high performance digitalised database. Above all else, this solution allows them to eliminate many of the issues associated with outdated IT systems. “I’ve not given my IT infrastructure a single thought since I started using this solution. I can now concentrate completely on my task at hand – creating value for our members – instead of pouring some of my energies into solving IT problems,” summed up Mr Riesen.

By choosing a trustworthy partner, the CCI has boosted its productivity, started offering improved services to its members and regained the peace of mind that’s key to everyone’s success!

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