Especially at the beginning of the year, many events took place in digital form. It started with the Real PropTech Pitches, in which we took part alongside more than 260 PropTechs from all over Europe and were able to take away many interesting impressions on the topics of digitalisation, innovation and sustainability in the real estate industry. Spenglertag also took place as a digital trade fair - and for a whole month at that - with interesting talks. With an avatar of their own choosing, visitors and exhibitors could move around freely and, between the talks, visit the virtual trade fair stands and communicate with one another. Here too we can look back on exciting conversations and inspiring ideas. Finally in fully real form again, BIM World in Munich took place at the end of the year, which we attended at full strength with five people from marketing and IT. For most of us it was the first time we had been at a construction trade fair in person, and we found it a very exciting experience. The reactions to the Vanillaplan software and to our new use case, which we presented for the first time, were consistently positive, which delighted us. We were also able to get to know interesting other start-ups and exchange ideas with them constructively. Last but not least on our list of events is our participation in Innovation Basel. After being admitted to the programme at the beginning of the year, we were able to benefit from a wealth of helpful input and great feedback over the course of the year.
Besides exciting events, we were also able to achieve a good deal in the area of partnerships this year. At the beginning of the year Vanillaplan became a member of the Bundesverband für digitales Bauen, a German industry association for ConstructionTech start-ups. We got to know the BDBau as part of the «Digital Construction Week» and were united by a shared interest in promoting innovation, progress and digitalisation in the construction industry. Since June Vanillaplan has also been a partner in the HGC programme. We were also very pleased about the collaboration with Borm Informatik AG and Orbit Informatik AG in September, through which we were able to gain two partners from the software industry for wood-processing businesses and building services. We look forward to good cooperation next year too!
Beyond that there were also a number of internal changes this year. On the one hand we were able to enlarge our team - both in marketing and in IT - by two members. On the other hand, in mid-September we (finally!) managed to complete our image film. This project had been in the air since the beginning of the year, but it was delayed rather more than initially expected because of coronavirus restrictions and several rounds of reworking. After a great deal of effort we were ultimately more than satisfied with the result. In addition, as every year, we commissioned an academic piece of work in order to gain deeper information in a field relevant to Vanillaplan. Lucas Welter's bachelor's thesis in the department of «Applied Psychology» at the FHNW examined which criteria determine successful teamwork, which was of particular interest to us in the context of our new teams feature. Philipp Kunz, a student at the Swiss Construction School in Aarau, also approached us to test Vanillaplan in the company where he was doing his placement as part of his diploma thesis and to compare it with other construction software. His favourite, on account of its simplicity as well as the option of capacity planning and the scheduling of staff and non-staff resources, was ultimately Vanillaplan. We were of course delighted with this positive, practice-based feedback!
Between trade fair visits, mentoring programmes and forging partnerships, we nevertheless had time to develop the Vanillaplan software further and equip it with additional functions. One exciting feature added this year is the teams function, which we developed together with a pilot customer from civil engineering. It allows employees, machines, vehicles and tools to be grouped together as a team and assigned to projects jointly, which offers particular added value for companies with consistent teams or surfacing crews.
Beyond that we were able to make great progress with our interfaces this year and successfully developed our integration platform further. Once the electoral campaign over the naming had been survived, we were all satisfied with the result in the end - and the cloud-based integration platform Vanillaplan Fair was created. It makes data exchange between any IT systems possible fully automatically and can take place on a time- or event-driven basis. This year we were able to build integrations with Messerli, Abacus, Borm, SAP and Bexio and plan to expand this further next year.
Not to be forgotten on the list of our new developments this year is of course our use case for collaborative scheduling of construction projects. Through interlocking scheduling, the cooperation of all project participants in joint construction projects is simplified and the commitment to deadlines strengthened on both sides. Here too we look forward to promising further developments in the coming year!
Review of the year - Vanillaplan 2021
by Elena Höppner Content MarketingPublished on 12/16/2021
The days are getting ever shorter, temperatures are steadily falling and the preparations for Christmas are drawing continually closer - suspiciously many signs that the year is slowly drawing to a close. When we at Vanillaplan looked back over the past year, we were able to recall many funny, exciting and, in hindsight, formative moments and projects. We have enlarged our team, forged new partnerships and were able - despite coronavirus - to take part in quite a few exciting events. And not least our product has gained a number of new functions and been able to undergo further development. We would like to share the most important moments with you now.
