How Touring Club Switzerland woke up a dormant network by giving it a job

The network was still there. Nobody was using it.

Touring Club Switzerland is the country's largest mobility club, with 1.5 million members and more than a century spent advocating for road users. Across 1,500 employees and a network of regional offices, keeping people aligned is an organisational problem before it is a technical one.

• A social network with nothing to do. TCS had a corporate network, but it had gone dormant. The platform was no longer serving a purpose anyone could name.
• The underlying need had not gone away. Departments, locations and functions still had limited visibility into each other's work, and the tools for cross-functional collaboration were not up to it.
• Distance turned into disconnection. Colleagues working away from headquarters were the furthest from the documents and decisions that affected them.
• A social layer alone was never going to fix it. Reactivating the network meant giving it a role worth the investment, not relaunching the same thing with a new banner.

Reposition it as the knowledge layer, not another channel

TCS wanted the intersection of two things that rarely sit together: structured enough to manage documents and policies reliably, open enough to sustain the informal exchange that builds alignment. Four capabilities decided it.

• Communication that moves fast. Asking for input, posting updates and opening a discussion had to be quick, because a communication team that waits on a publishing process stops publishing.
• Important documents stay in view. Highlighting essential resources keeps them from sinking under everything published since.
• Full autonomy over the structure. The team evolves the platform as needs change, with no IT ticket for every adjustment.
• Three space types, three levels of collaboration. TCS communities carry what the whole organisation needs, the shared foundation for company-wide alignment. My communities let people follow the subjects that matter to their work: road safety, events, trends, training. My projects are self-service, temporary spaces teams open and run themselves for cross-functional work.

We wanted Elium to be a central brick of the Touring Club digital workplace. The knowledge focus of this tool allows us to reposition our social network. It offers a lot of value.

The distance stopped mattering as much

The gain landed hardest where the disconnection had been worst. Colleagues working away from headquarters now reach the documents and discussions they need to stay aligned with what the organisation is deciding, in one place rather than by asking someone who happens to know.

The communication team became noticeably more productive: posting stories, pushing updates and surfacing relevant content is now quick enough to do often.

Silos between locations began to dissolve as transparency rose and the "one-TCS" feeling took hold. And collaboration turned proactive. People open project spaces and communities themselves instead of falling back on email chains and hallway conversations that leave no trace.

A dormant network does not need a relaunch. It needs a job, and TCS gave its own one: hold the knowledge, not only the conversation.