Austria's news system informs the whole population about current events on a daily basis. Using words, images, graphics, audio and videos, the inhabitants are kept up to date.
The Austria Press Agency is the leading information service provider in Austria. It is owned by twelve daily newspapers from Austria, and the ORF, Austria's national television. In the APA Newsroom, about 165 APA editors create 600 news stories a day.
Of course, the challenge besides creating the infographics is communication. First of all the communication with the customers, but also the internal communication.- Walter Longauer
An influential company comes with strong requirements. The APA had a focus on the current production. Before, the internal communication was carried out via E-Mails or bilateral conversations. Yet there is an essential problem with Mails: "Chinese-Whispers".
Grape helps to bundle communication on respective topics. In order to fully replace the email channel, support emails are forwarded to Grape.
Grape really is the place, where everything at APA happens- Walter Longauer, APA
Before Grape, the communication was intransparent and distributed. Mails, AOM (the APA Online Manager) and telephones calls made it difficult to overlook. Since several years, customers have been directly connected to Grape and the team . The feedback we received was that they feel much closer to the action. Communication used to be difficult to manage and difficult to track. Now everything is in one place.
Integrate Partners
Together with APA, we decided to optimize feedback channels and communication channels.
Walter Longauer came up with the idea of tackling communication with European partner agencies.
Some stories call for the research work of several agencies. There's an agency providing the framework. Another one is powering up the data, and yet another one makes the graphics. In the end everyone can use the results. This works in real time.
Security
Security is a central topic for APA. Especially regarding client-feedback-channels, the medium is not only used for internal communication. This calls for even higher security standards.
Of course a European-Chat-System has a real advantage in that respect- Walter Longauer, APA
Increased efficiency
Due to APA's change to the Grape Chat systems, the efficiency was significantly increased. This is especially true regarding the internal communication.
We now need roughly a third of the time to complete workflows- Walter Longauer, APA
On a scale from 1 to 10, the manager rates the efficiency gain at 10. The internal communication, according to Walter Longauer has already reached the top level.
The next steps for him are about growth. APA wants to get even more customers into the chat channel for additional feedback.
He would like to get more of the European news agencies on board.
And if other continents join in after that, that would also be a gain.
We are already in contact with the Australians. So if they jump on board, we are where we want to go.- Walter Longauer, APA
