2021: Into the future with new resilience

Increasing turnover, major new business and new employees: There were successes at all levels again in the second year of the pandemic. After powerful growth in 2020, Ergon deliberately invested in the ongoing development of the enterprise.

Remarkable achievements from a dedicated team: Turnover in 2021 came to CHF 62.1 million, a 3.8% increase versus the prior year. “In the last two years our business has developed well and we’ve achieved our objectives. After powerful growth in turnover and employee numbers in 2020, in 2021 we deliberately budgeted for lower growth and concentrated on the ongoing development of our organisation. I’m especially pleased with a sustained low staff turnover rate of below 5%,” says Gabriela Keller, CEO of Ergon Informatik. This was only possible thanks to the full engagement of the company’s 360 dedicated employees. They have successfully delivered a total of 33 projects for 260 customers, with 47 projects constituting new business. The customer portfolio remains constant and broad-based. New projects have been added, especially in the public sector.

Focus on the financial industry

Again in 2021 Ergon proved itself to be a strong digitalisation partner to banks and financial services providers. For example, for its newly launched open-banking-as-a-service offering, the banking software manufacturer Finnova has opted for Ergon’s Swiss Open Banking solution and security products that are already in use at a Liechtenstein bank. The cantonal banks of Lucerne and St. Gallen are creating a shared platform for the digital pillar 3a pension scheme, and aim to extend the cooperation to other banks. Another strong collective endeavour is Ergon’s CardX payment authorisation solution, which is ready for SIC5 Instant Payments. Bank CIC is another bank to join the community. 

Expansion in the public sector 

Ergon is consolidating its position in the public sector market with multiple new projects for government bodies. One major success is a long-term engagement for the Office of the Attorney General and the Federal Office of Police, fedpol, where Ergon won a rigorous public tender to be selected as the digitalisation partner for Joining Forces. An important milestone is a framework agreement concluded by the German Airlock partner Thinking Objects with the Procurement Office of the German Federal Ministry of the Interior to provide Airlock software licences, software support and product-related services. Another project is a practical guide to blockchain for the cantonal administration created by Ergon in collaboration with the Chancellery of Canton Zurich and the University of Zurich’s Blockchain Centre. 

Still broadly underpinned

One clear strength of Ergon is diversity. This is demonstrated by diverse projects across all industries. A customised platform for handling orders, jobs and invoices has been created for WWZ AG on the basis of Ergon’s order management solution. Ergon has created a cloud-based production system and a hub for the internet of things for the Horgen-based industrial company Feller. Both are fundamental elements of the Wiser by Feller home automation solution. And together with longstanding customer Axon Lab AG, Ergon is driving the development of the medical practice software Axenita, with new features supporting things like collaboration between medical practices and enabling efficient workflows within practices.

Airlock: the courage to innovate 

Ergon is treading new paths in terms of its distribution model with Airlock Microgateway Community Edition, launching a freemium version available at no cost to developers as a basic version for application and API security in the container environment. The fact that this courage to innovate is paying off is illustrated by Airlock 2FA, a solution launched last year that has been very popular and led to ten new customers last year. Airlock has also notched up successes overseas. Thanks to adeptly initiated partnerships, the 22 new customers for Airlock also included companies in Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines. 

Future-oriented projects 

The “Heinzelmännli” (“little helper”) innovation project, which Ergon is working on with the University of Zurich, the FHNW, recapp IT and Innofactory, also promises to optimise the way day-to-day business is conducted. The vision is a language assistant that optimises investment advisory sessions and can handle all Swiss-German dialects, thus going beyond understanding words, sentences and commands. In 2021 the focus included testing acceptance, user interaction, speech recognition and machine learning linguistic understanding, as well as analysing machine learning model architectures. 

Ergon is driving digital transformation for architects, engineers and the construction industry with a patent-pending process in augmented reality (AR) and building information modelling (BIM). The goal is to have virtual models available everywhere on a smartphone or tablet, quickly and conveniently, to make day-to-day work easier for those involved in the construction process. 

Airlock Anomaly shield, once an innovation project, is now integrated as standard in the Airlock Gateway, assuring even greater data security. It uses machine-learning technologies to detect irregularities in sessions and respond with appropriate measures.

Investment in a modern workplace 

For the third time, Ergon has won the Swiss Employer Award. The award is based on an anonymous staff survey – something that makes us particularly proud. Ergon invests on a continuous basis in an attractive, high-quality working environment. For example there are to be new spaces for collaboration in the hall in the inner courtyard of the Merkurstrasse 43 (M43) premises, rented from May 2022. CEO Gabriela Keller: “We’re in a phase of further development. The way we work is changing on a permanent basis. Our goal is to combine the best of both worlds, working remotely and on premises. The future will bring a lot of new things. That’s that enables us to grow and learn. I’m proud of our people. Now we can look forward to meeting each other more often and developing the way we collaborate even further."