Trade statistics

Collection and analysis platform for Swiss trade statistics

Via the trade statistics platform, fiduciaries collect data on the balance sheet and income statement of around 7,000 commercial companies in over 90 industries. With the help of statistics based on this data and confi­gurable reports, they provide their clients with key infor­mation for an individual assessment of their situation.

Initial position

The trade statistics were founded in 1946 by the Swiss Trade Association and managed by the “Conference of Commercial Trust Companies”. Until recently, the conference published the most important business figures of about 90 industries in book form. In 2020, the digita­lization project for statistics was launched. On the one hand, data collection was to be digitized, and on the other hand, members were to be enabled to generate indivi­dualized evaluations and reports. In the future, this should also enable further statistical evaluations and the further scaling of the platform.

Digitization of data collection and analysis

All processes for the creation and use of trade statistics were trans­ferred to a new web appli­cation. In addition to the complete data collection, the automatic data prepa­ration including intel­ligent cleaning and extensive evaluation options, this also includes the adminis­tration of the memberships as well as a compre­hensive user management with different autho­rization levels.

In the data collection, the fiduciary members record the figures of the balance sheet and the income statement of their customers according to commercial law. In order to calculate relevant key figures, additional key data is also collected – for example, the number of employees and the size of the company. The appli­cation supports the user with numerous input aids such as detailed expla­nations, automatic validations, previous year compa­risons or consistency checks. Submitted data records can be checked by the data office and, if necessary, rejected with correction notes.

Data security and anony­mization are central to the evaluation. All data sets undergo intel­ligent outlier cleaning to guarantee robust and meaningful compa­rative statistics. Based on the number of data records submitted, the level of detail of the evaluation is also dynamically adjusted to prevent conclusions being drawn about individual companies. With a compre­hensive report editor, users can create and configure indivi­dualized industry and customer evaluations. To do this, they can freely combine different table views, inter­active time history graphics, and their own text modules with individual comments.

“With Datahouse we had a competent partner on our side, who helped us with their statistics know-how and project experience to complete the project in time and cost and to provide all our users with a very intuitive solution in a modern design.”

Markus Helbling, BDO Zürich

Conclusion

The trade statistics have been successfully digitized. The platform facilitates efficient and accurate data collection for members and makes it possible to create indivi­dualized industry or customer reports. Specialized user roles for the business office and the data office facilitate adminis­tration and enable the further scaling of trade statistics.

More

Are you facing similar challenges or do you have a similar project that you need help with? Then don’t hesitate to contact our Senior Expert Data Scientist Thomas Maier.