Regios Digitalisierung
Regios is an energy cooperative in the Mühlviertel: citizens, companies, Vereine and Gemeinden jointly owning regional green power. My job is to make that growth run on software instead of paperwork: I built and run the Regios Hub, the central platform for members, applications, events and marketing, and I carry the performance marketing and the data work that feeds it.
The story in one sentence: an organisation that managed its members in a Microsoft Access database now signs up new Genossenschafter digitally with qualified signatures, measures its marketing cookieless first, and treats the DSGVO as a feature. Every screenshot below is the real product, filled with random demo data.
My Role
Three jobs, one accountable person
Regios wanted momentum, not a supplier per discipline. So one person carries development, the data work and the performance marketing, and the same person answers for the results of all three.
- Development
- The Regios Hub: a custom Ruby on Rails platform that became the central system for members, organisations, applications, events and appointments.
- Data Engineering, Science & Analytics
- Clean pipelines from every touchpoint into one model, cookieless first measurement, and numbers the Vorstand can actually trust.
- Performance Marketing
- Meta and Google campaigns run against real conversion economics: full funnel tracking, budget control and a health index for the whole system.
The Challenge
A cooperative cannot grow on a Microsoft Access database
Before the Hub, member data lived in a legacy MS Access system, processes lived on paper, and marketing lived on faith. Every list was a copy of a copy, nobody could say what a new member cost to win, and DSGVO compliance was a hope rather than a property of the system. If that sounds like your organisation, this page is for you.
The Hub
One system that knows every member, every cent and every promise
The Regios Hub replaced the legacy database as the single source of truth. People, organisations, shares, loans, events, appointments and every interaction live in one place, encrypted where it matters, logged where it counts.
- Complete Customer Management
- Every person and organisation with contact preferences, consents, relationships, investments and full history. Duplicate detection and merge tools keep the base clean.
- Encrypted By Design
- Emails, phone numbers and addresses are encrypted in the database, with deterministic encryption where staff still need exact search.
- An Immutable Paper Trail
- Every change to a person or organisation lands in an append only audit log with actor, before and after state. Entries cannot be edited or deleted, not even by admins.
- Away From The Legacy System
- The old Access era system is reduced to a sync target while the Hub leads. No more copies of copies, no more parallel truths.
What this means for you
Your team stops reconciling spreadsheets and starts answering customers. When the auditor, the notary or the Vorstand asks, the answer is one query away, with proof of who changed what and when.
Screenshots show the live hub filled with randomised demo data. Real member and applicant data stays strictly confidential.
Digital Membership
From interested visitor to signed Genossenschafter, fully digital
The first big build: a public join wizard where private persons and organisations become members and buy shares online, governed by the cooperative’s real rules rather than a generic form tool’s imagination.
- Four Products, Complex Rules
- Shares, shares plus member loan, member loan and citizen loan, each with its own eligibility, caps and legal texts. Member loans respect the statutory cap of twice the active share value, checked live and again at approval.
- Verified Email, Verified Member
- Every applicant confirms their email with a six digit code that expires after fifteen minutes and five attempts. Existing members are recognised the same way, and the system never leaks who is a member and who is not.
- Organisations Done Properly
- Companies, Vereine and Gemeinden join with their Firmenbuchnummer, ZVR number or Gemeindekennziffer, a named Ansprechpartner and their authorised signatories, captured in the wizard itself.
- Digitally Signed, Legally Solid
- Contracts are signed with ID Austria qualified signatures through A-Trust, with a paper fallback including ID verification. Below the board threshold, share applications approve automatically with a generated minutes reference.
What this means for you
A join process that used to mean printed forms and weeks of back and forth now completes in minutes, at night, on a phone. The office receives finished, signed, verified applications with a payment reference that matches the final contract number.
Screenshots show the live hub filled with randomised demo data. Real member and applicant data stays strictly confidential.
Screenshots show the live hub filled with randomised demo data. Real member and applicant data stays strictly confidential.
Organisations
Vollmacht, Zeichnungsberechtigte and quorums without the folder of photocopies
Legal entities are where membership gets genuinely hard. The Hub models it properly instead of leaving it to tribal knowledge.
- Authorised Signatories
- Contacts can be marked zeichnungsberechtigt, and each organisation carries a signing quorum. The system blocks impossible configurations and adjusts the quorum safely when someone loses authority.
- Vollmacht Management
- Voting proxies are first class: standing Vollmacht flags on contacts, plus per event proxies for the Generalversammlung with the signed authorisation PDF attached to the registration.
- Sequential Digital Co-Signing
- Where two signatures are required, the second signatory receives a personal invitation link and signs the already signed PDF, in order, because qualified signatures are append only.
What this means for you
When the Generalversammlung comes, you know exactly who may sign, who holds a Vollmacht and which documents prove it. No scrambling through email attachments an hour before the meeting.
Screenshots show the live hub filled with randomised demo data. Real member and applicant data stays strictly confidential.
Performance Marketing
Cookieless first measurement, so the numbers survive the consent banner
Roughly a third of visitors decline tracking. Most dashboards silently pretend those people do not exist. The Hub measures with a privacy friendly, cookieless counter as the source of truth and uses GA4 only for the depth it is still good for, and it shows you the gap explicitly as the tracking denial rate.
- The Full Funnel, Priced
- Awareness, traffic, engagement and conversion campaigns each report their own economics: CPM at the top, CPC in the middle, cost per macro conversion at the bottom. Spend follows evidence between stages.
- A Health Index For The Whole System
- Interest, awareness and conversions are combined into one weighted index with a seven day average, adjusted for budget so a quiet ad week does not read as a crisis.
- Budgets That Warn Before They Burn
- Monthly budgets track spend against the ideal daily pace and project the month’s end. Overspend warnings arrive while there is still time to act.
- Synced, Not Copy Pasted
- Meta and Google performance sync into the Hub every few minutes. Campaign UTMs are generated by the system, so attribution discipline is automatic rather than aspirational.
What this means for you
You see what a genuinely won member costs, not what a click costs. And because the measurement respects visitors who decline tracking, the numbers stay honest instead of quietly flattering.
Screenshots show the live hub filled with randomised demo data. Real member and applicant data stays strictly confidential.
Events
Invitation flows that fill the room and then follow up by themselves
Energy cooperatives live from their gatherings, from Energiegespräche to the Generalversammlung. The Hub runs the whole loop: targeted invitations, one click reservations, reminders and follow ups.
- Audience Criteria, Not Mailing Lists
- Email flow steps target by tags, products, engagement, registration status or opens of the previous step, with include and exclude logic. GV invitations can target exactly the active members with voting rights.
- One Click To Reserve
- Invitees confirm or decline straight from the email. Personal invitation links pre fill and auto confirm, capacity and deadlines close registration automatically, and every guest gets a calendar file.
- Send Safety Built In
- Every step is idempotent per recipient, so a retry can never double email an audience. Steps schedule relative to the event date and pause themselves if the event is cancelled.
What this means for you
The room fills without anyone exporting a spreadsheet to a newsletter tool, and every invitation, registration and attendance lands back on the member’s record where it belongs.
Screenshots show the live hub filled with randomised demo data. Real member and applicant data stays strictly confidential.
CRM & Appointments
A cockpit that makes sure no promise to a customer quietly dies
Prospects book twenty minute appointments online inside real business hours, respecting Austrian holidays and a fair lead time. Callbacks and appointments land in one cockpit with urgency colours and clear ownership.
- Public Appointment Booking
- Phone call or office visit, booked against live availability. Double bookings are impossible and every booking creates the person, the touchpoint and the staff task in one go.
- Callbacks With Teeth
- A callback request turns red after 24 hours and can only be dismissed after three documented call attempts. Polite persistence, enforced by the system.
- History That Cannot Be Rewritten
- Every interaction is an append only touchpoint with direction, channel and outcome, categorised and taggable, so the next colleague reads the true story.
What this means for you
Every enquiry gets an owner and a deadline the moment it arrives. Your customers feel looked after, and you can prove response times instead of guessing them.
Screenshots show the live hub filled with randomised demo data. Real member and applicant data stays strictly confidential.
DSGVO
Data protection as a feature, not a disclaimer
The Hub treats DSGVO as an engineering requirement. Retention is configured per system and data category, each with its legal basis, and the rules actually execute instead of living in a Word document.
- Configurable Retention Rules
- Seventeen policies across CRM, contracts, accounting, communication, surveys and events define how long each data category lives, from twelve months for enquiries to ten years for signed contracts.
- Anonymisation That Reaches The Ad Platforms
- When a person is anonymised, the Hub also triggers deletion at Meta and Google, then strips the local record while keeping the legally required financial trail.
- A Printable Verfahrensverzeichnis
- The whole retention configuration prints as a clean document for authorities. When the question comes, the answer is already formatted.
- The Farewell Email That Wins People Back
- Before an inactive contact is anonymised, the system sends a plain, honest notice that their data is about to be deleted under our retention rules. A surprising number reply with “actually, I have been meaning to get in touch”, and a deletion notice becomes a conversion.
What this means for you
You stop fearing the data protection question and start using it. Compliance becomes a trust signal for members, and even the goodbye email quietly turns every stone on the way out.
Screenshots show the live hub filled with randomised demo data. Real member and applicant data stays strictly confidential.
The Plan
Build. Automate. Grow.
The same three step arc I bring to every engagement, shaped here for a cooperative.
- Build
- Replace the legacy core with a custom hub around your real processes: members, organisations, contracts and compliance in one system you own.
- Automate
- Let the system do the repetitive work: join applications, signatures, invitations, reminders, retention. People handle exceptions, not routine.
- Grow
- Point honest measurement at the funnel and spend where members actually come from. Marketing stops being a cost centre with a logo.
Testimonials
What the team at Regios says
The real quotes arrive with the case study. Lorem ipsum keeps their seats warm for now.
Norbert Miesenberger
Board Member, Regios
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation.”
Christian Neufeld
Board Member, Regios
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation.”
Julia Landl
Sales, Regios
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation.”
Gottlinde Reithmayr
Assistant, Regios
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation.”
Nina Winkler
Accountant, Regios
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation.”
Simon Klambauer
Project Manager, Regios
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation.”
Ahmed Zerzour
Marketing & Communications, Regios
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation.”
Your organisation still runs on Access and folders?
Tell me where the data lives today and where it hurts. I will tell you honestly what a hub like this would look like for you, and what it would change.