LochemEnergie
Citizen cooperative builds with volunteers and students.
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Smart digitization and automation are a must in the energy transition.
Smart digitization and automation are a must in the energy transition.
Over the course of twelve years, LochemEnergie has dedicated itself to promoting sustainability for the residents of the Lochem municipality. With over 1,300 members, this community-driven organization advises over 800 households every year on ways to reduce their energy costs.
In this time, LochemEnergie has focused on implementing sustainable energy solutions for the community which have included collective solar roofs and wind turbines. The cooperative has also developed partnerships with the local municipality and various umbrella organizations, all with the goal of supporting the community’s transition towards more environmentally friendly energy solutions.
In a recent episode of our podcast series, Building with Grexx, we had the opportunity to interview Bob Duindam, the director of LochemEnergie. One of the key topics Bob discussed was the importance of incorporating automation and digitization within their organization with the use of the Grexx Platform, and how they are implementing these strategies within their cooperative.
🔊 Check out the episode: Building with Grexx: LochemEnergie
Building with Grexx
To improve organizational efficiency, LochemEnergie knew that automating certain organizational tasks was required. Grexx provided the solution with our low-code platform.
Automation of work processes
Because LochemEnergie is a citizens' initiative, it works a lot with volunteers. While every paid employee finds it important that work processes run smoothly, this is especially crucial for volunteers who generously give their up their time for free. Keeping volunteers happy is important and, with this in mind, LochemEnergie decided it necessary to automate a number of commonly used work processes.
Grexx’s expert consultants trained LochemEnergie’s volunteers to develop an application that encompassed the key organizational work processes. This application was then rolled out into practice and is now being used by the energy coaches in their consultancy work. The application can also be maintained and further developed internally by the trained team.
Building a CRM application by UTwente students
In addition to automating the work processes for assigning energy advisors, LochemEnergie also wanted to develop a CRM application that would seamlessly integrate with their other existing systems. This project was carried out by students from the University of Twente using the Grexx Platform, which provided them with a cost-effective and educational learning experience that delivered a valuable solution for the cooperative.
Next steps for LochemEnergie
Director Bob Duindam, discussed the next steps for LochemEnergie, explaining: "We are very happy with our decision to use the Grexx Platform and so are our volunteers. With Grexx, you can really build applications yourself, as the platform is codeless and modular in nature. The team that were trained to build the applications really enjoyed the process.
Moving forward, we will focus on reusing these created modules in various work processes for different services, allowing us to expand our support within the organization as quickly as possible."
LochemEnergie’s utilization of the Grexx Platform shows how easily and efficiently in-house applications can be developed, even with the involvement of volunteers or students without a programming background. If interested, feel free to explore for yourself by creating a free trial account or schedule a discovery call with one of our colleagues. We are always happy to assist you.
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