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.
https://www.regios.at/
The brand new Regios website, live at regios.at. Scroll inside the window to explore each page.
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.
Regios Energiegenossenschaft
Regional green power, owned by the people who use it. Become part of the Genossenschaft.
Discover the BeteiligungID Austria
Contracts signed with ID Austria, the state grade signature
This one matters enormously to Regios. Membership contracts are signed digitally with ID Austria qualified signatures through A-Trust: the same legal weight as a handwritten signature under eIDAS, recognised across the EU. No printouts, no scans, no trips to the office. A member signs on their phone, and the contract is legally solid the moment they do.
- Qualified, Not Just Drawn
- A scribble on a touchscreen is not a signature. ID Austria produces qualified electronic signatures, legally equivalent to pen and paper and verified against state identity.
- Sequential Co Signing
- Where organisations need two signatures, the second signatory receives a personal link and signs the already signed PDF in sequence, because qualified signatures are append only.
- A Paper Fallback That Still Checks ID
- Not everyone has ID Austria activated. The wizard falls back to a paper route with identity verification, so nobody is locked out and nothing becomes less legally sound.
What this means for you
A join that used to mean printing, signing, scanning and posting now happens in one sitting on a phone. For a cooperative bound to formal requirements, that is the difference between digitalisation as a slogan and digitalisation that holds up in front of a notary.
The Member Portal
Members help themselves, the office breathes
The newest building block: a self service Genossenschafterbereich on the new website, where Personen and Unternehmer log in and manage their own membership. No phone call, no email ping pong, no waiting for office hours.
- Own Data, Own Hands
- Members update their contact details, address and preferences themselves. Every change lands in the Hub, validated, logged and instantly correct everywhere.
- Contracts In One Place
- Shares, member loans and signed contracts are visible at any time, with documents ready to download. No more asking the office for a copy.
- Built For Both Kinds Of Member
- Private persons see their personal membership, Unternehmer manage their organisation with its contacts and holdings, under the same rules the Hub itself enforces.
What this means for you
Routine questions disappear from the office inbox, data quality goes up because the people who know the data maintain it, and members get the modern experience they expect from their bank.
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.
The Performance Strategy
One loop: track, measure, test, improve
This is where the holistic Digitalisierung shows its teeth. Website, campaigns, tracking, measurement and testing are not separate tools, they are one continuous loop. Every visit teaches the system something, every insight changes what happens next, and the whole thing compounds month after month.
- Track Honestly
- Cookieless first measurement counts everyone, including the third of visitors who decline tracking. The numbers describe reality, not just the subset that clicked accept.
- Measure What Matters
- Funnel economics from CPM down to cost per won member, a weighted health index across the whole system, and budgets that warn before they burn.
- Test Instead Of Guess
- Headlines, landing pages, email subjects and creatives run as A/B tests against real conversions, not against opinions in a meeting room.
- Improve And Repeat
- Winning variants become the new baseline, budget moves where the evidence points, and the loop starts again one notch higher.
The new website
visits and interest, counted cookieless
Join wizard
decision: shares, loans, signature
Meta & Google Ads
awareness and clicks, spend synced
Events & emails
engagement: opens, registrations
Appointments & CRM
conversations: callbacks, visits
↓
The Regios Hub
- Persons and organisations
- Touchpoints and consents
- Funnel and campaign economics
- Health index, one score
- DSGVO rules that execute
↓
Budget decisions
spend follows evidence
Invitation flows
the right audience, automatically
A/B tests
variants against real conversions
Board reporting
numbers the Vorstand can trust
every result is measured and feeds the next decision
1
score for the whole system: interest, awareness and conversions, weighted and budget adjusted
7d
rolling average, so one quiet ad day never reads as a crisis
4
weeks of warning before a soft patch, while the board can still act
Illustrative curves with test data. The Hub draws them live from real campaigns, and every number on this page traces back to it.
| Week | Health index, live | Before the Hub |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 34 | 34 |
| 4 | 39 | 35.2 |
| 8 | 48.5 | 35.4 |
| 12 | 57.5 | 35.6 |
| 16 | 66.5 | 35.8 |
| 20 | 72 | 36 |
| 24 | 76.5 | 36.1 |
What this means for you
Nobody argues from gut feeling anymore. The website gets measurably better every month, the ad budget buys more members for the same money, and every decision has a number behind it.
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
DSGVO worry free: compliance the system does by default
The Hub treats DSGVO as an engineering requirement, and that turns the biggest worry of every European organisation into a feature. 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. Compliance is not something the team has to remember. It is what the system does on its own, every night.
- Retention That Executes Itself
- 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. Expired documents are removed automatically, not via a todo list.
- 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.
- Data Requests, Answered In Minutes
- When someone exercises their DSGVO rights, the Hub assembles everything it holds about them at the press of a button: profile, touchpoints, contracts, consents. What used to be a nervous week of searching becomes a clean, complete export.
- One Settings Page Runs It All
- Retention periods, anonymisation rules, legal bases and deletion behaviour are configured in the Hub itself, per system and per category. Adjusting a policy is a form field, not a developer ticket.
- 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
The result is DSGVO without the background anxiety. Contacts anonymise themselves on schedule, documents expire on their own, access requests are answered in minutes, and the whole configuration prints for the authority. You run the cooperative, the system runs the compliance, and the famous four percent fine finds nothing left to attach itself to.
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.
What Comes Next
Members become the sales team
The foundation is built and the loop is running. The next stage is pure growth hacking: turning satisfied Genossenschafter into the strongest acquisition channel the cooperative has. Custom technology makes it possible, because the referral mechanics plug straight into the join wizard, the CRM and the measurement loop that already exist.
- Referral Schemes
- Every member gets a personal referral link. Friends and neighbours join through the same digital wizard in minutes, and the system attributes every new member to the person who brought them.
- Rewards That Fit A Cooperative
- Vouchers, event invitations and recognition rather than crude cash bonuses. The voucher engine already lives in the Hub, the referral layer simply plugs into it.
- Growth Hacking On Custom Rails
- None of this works on off the shelf tools. Because the technology is custom built around the real processes, every experiment ships in days and every result is measured in the same honest loop.
The referral engine
built on the wizard, CRM and measurement that already exist
Happy member
knows exactly why it pays off
↓
Personal link
attributed, measurable, theirs
↓
Friends & neighbours
trust beats any ad
↓
Digital join
minutes, not weeks
↓
Reward for both
vouchers, events, recognition
↓
New active member
and the loop starts again
↺
Want technology that fits your processes instead of the other way round? That is exactly what my SaaS development is for, and Growth Plus is the strategy layer on top.
Testimonials
What the team at Regios says
Seven people, seven views of the same Digitalisierung.
Norbert Miesenberger
Board Member, Regios
“Every board knows the horror stories: digitalisation projects that eat two years and a fortune and then quietly die. We experienced the opposite. Within weeks we had working software solving real problems, and every month since has added something the team actually uses. One person who understands technology, data and marketing means decisions take a conversation, not a steering committee.”
Christian Neufeld
Board Member, Regios
“My biggest worry was dependency. Custom software sounds like marrying a single developer and hoping for the best. The opposite happened: the system is documented, tested and built on Ruby on Rails, a framework any capable developer can take over. The code belongs to us, every process is written down, and the audit trail convinces our auditors before they finish asking. That is what ownership feels like.”
Julia Landl
Sales, Regios
“I used to send forms, wait for the post, chase signatures and lose interested people along the way. Now someone decides to join at eight in the evening and by ten past eight they have signed digitally, with everything checked and correct. Nothing gets lost anymore, my follow ups sit on a list with deadlines instead of in my head, and I spend my time talking to people instead of shuffling paper.”
Gottlinde Reithmayr
Assistant, Regios
“I was the person who knew where everything was, which sounds nice until you want a holiday. Today the answer to almost every question is in the Hub: who is a member, what they hold, what was sent and when. The routine work that used to fill my days simply happens by itself, and when someone needs a document I click once instead of digging through folders.”
Nina Winkler
Accountant, Regios
“Accountants dream of systems where the numbers simply agree, and this is the first one I have worked with where they do. Payment references match contract numbers, every share and loan carries its complete history, and nothing depends on somebody remembering to update a spreadsheet. Month end used to be detective work. Now it is a report.”
Simon Klambauer
Project Manager, Regios
“I have managed enough IT projects to expect delays, surprises and invoices for both. This one ran differently: we discussed a feature, days later it was live, tested and documented, and it did what we agreed. When something needed changing, we changed it the same week. No tickets vanishing into an agency backlog, no translation layer between us and the person writing the code. That speed changes what you dare to plan.”
Ahmed Zerzour
Marketing & Communications, Regios
“Marketing used to mean doing sensible things and hoping. Now every campaign reports what a genuinely won member costs, the measurement respects people who decline tracking, and we A/B test instead of debating. Our events fill through automated invitation flows that politely follow up by themselves. I finally argue with numbers instead of feelings, and the budget goes where the evidence points.”
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.