Innovating

Partnerwise

Partnerwise is the Swiss Online tool that helps to take wise decisions. Any kind of request or idea will be automatically analysed, based on weighted criteria and a RoboAdvisor. Decisions become clear and easy.

Requests, offers, ideas create high costs:

  • It takes a lot of time to receive, read, coordinate internally and answer them.
  • They quickly cost more than USD/EUR 100'000 per year just in costs for the personnel handling these requests.
  • Most companies use MS Office Excel sheets and type again the requests in order to have a database with very limited analysis functions and a high time investment to create and manage the database.

There is a lack of objectivity for the allocation of budgets.

  • Selection Criteria once set are not always followed.
  • Selection Criteria are understood differently among different countries, regions, managers.
  • There is often no common weighting of the selection criteria.

Partnerwise saves time and costs and increases the efficiency and effectiveness of managing any enquiry by using a RoboAdvisor that brings objectivity to any decision-making process:

  • Ideas for investments.
  • Requests and ideas for partnerships.
  • Requests and ideas for subsidies.
  • Requests and ideas for sponsorship.
  • Requests and ideas for philanthropy.
  • Requests for offers.

Use Case: How Partnerwise helped thousands of companies to survive during the Covid-19 pandemic in Switzerland

In Switzerland, companies affected by the lockdowns had the option of requesting financial support from the respective canton, either as a loan or as a non-repayable grant.
The canton of Fribourg was considered a pioneer canton in Switzerland for handling Covid 19 support requests as early as November 2020. Nowhere did the handling of support requests run as fast as in the canton of Fribourg, as an investigation by French-speaking Swiss television in mid-February 2021 had revealed. There was a simple reason for this: in November 2020, the Department of Economic Affairs of the Canton of Fribourg was able to announce that it was the first canton to digitise the processing of applications for Covid 19 financial support. This was done by means of an electronically set-up switch, as the announcement stated. Here, Fribourg companies could submit applications for contributions.

RoboAdvisor for fast and secure processing

While other cantons also put a form on their website and used a simple database behind it - in most cases a standardised archiving programme from an American manufacturer - the solution of the Canton of Fribourg was significantly different. Behind the form, a RoboAdvisor tool developed in Switzerland was used, called Partnerwise (www.partnerwise.ch). "Thanks to the Partnerwise system, applications could be processed in less than 15 minutes on average and sent directly to our accounting department for payment," confirmed Pascal Krattinger, economic advisor to the Department of Economic Affairs of the Canton of Fribourg. This was fully in line with the introduction of digital administration 4.0 in the cantonal administration, said Krattinger.

The RoboAdvisor immediately evaluated and classified applications as valid or problematic based on predefined criteria and weightings. The employees of the Canton of Fribourg and, from February 2021 on, also of the Canton of Grisons were able to release valid applications for payment within a few minutes and concentrate on the problematic cases. From receipt to payment, the tool ensured simplified, fast and secure processing of applications over the electronic counter. Thanks to a sophisticated process and security system, even mishaps like the one in Zurich, when the Zurich Finance Directorate accidentally published hardship applicants in mid-April 2021, were not possible (https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/zuercher-finanzdirektion-leistet-sich-peinliches-datenleck-834135370782).

The theoretical origin of Partnerwise went back to the JKU

"We started developing Partnerwise a few years ago because we ourselves often received no response or only a very late response to enquiries and applications. Likewise, in the case of negative decisions, it was often not clear why an application had been rejected," explained Patrick Cotting from Fribourg, founder of CCI COTTING Consulting Ltd., who wrote his doctoral thesis at Johannes Kepler University (JKU) in Linz, Austria. "A little more than 20 years ago, I developed the theoretical basis for Partnerwise under the supervision of my doctoral supervisor Professor Gerhard Wührer. At that time, however, the development of a practically applicable Roboadvisor was not yet possible, but it is today." With Partnerwise, everything becomes faster, more transparent and more efficient. In addition, the applicant immediately receives a clear, comprehensible explanation of why an application was rejected or accepted. In addition to the cantons of Fribourg and Grisons, other well-known companies have been relying on the "Partnerwise" RoboAdvisor for several years. For example, in addition to the LeGruyère cheese brand and Geneva Airport, the beverage manufacturer Rivella, the energy companies BKW and SIG, and the Liechtensteinische Landesbank LLB.

CCI has recently integrated the Partnerwise solution into the tech company EPwise Ltd., which is further developing the tool - together with the other wise software solutions Eventwise and Immowise.

For more information visit partnerwise.ch and contact us for a free demo.