“It’s the biggest company you've never heard of,” says John Loyer, head of North American government and public affairs at Somfy Systems. With nearly 10,000 employees and a presence in more than 50 countries, Somfy has spent the last 50 years quietly becoming one of the largest manufacturers of electric motors in the world. Headquartered in the French Alps, Somfy builds the systems used in all sorts of commercial and residential building applications.
“At the end of the day, if anything opens or closes automatically in a building or home like a blind, shade, pergola, skylight, hurricane shutter, window, door, garage doors, etc. Somfy probably manufactures a motor that does that,” he says.
Loyer joined the company in 2022 to build the North American government affairs practice from scratch and identify legislative and regulatory opportunities while mitigating risk for the company. “They wanted me to start by creating a very extensive strategic plan encompassing federal, state, and local legislation, regulation, and building codes for all of North America, not just the U.S. … sort of building the plane as I flew it,” he says.
That’s a tall order and, starting as a team of one, Loyer immediately knew he would need the best tools at his disposal that would act as a force multiplier for his efforts. “There was only one option as far as I'm concerned, and that was FiscalNote,” he says.
A long-time FiscalNote champion during his days at the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association, now at Somfy Loyer continues to rely on CQ, FiscalNote, and our Professional Services team to build a successful government affairs practice in North America for Somfy.
Building Codes Dashboard: A Bespoke Solution Specifically for Somfy
Monitoring building codes at the state and local levels is vital for a manufacturer like Somfy. But tracking changes across the thousands of municipalities across all 50 states would be a manual, time-consuming process and the risk of missing something could be high and costly for the organization.
Frustrated with the lack of automated processes, Loyer saw an opportunity to partner with FiscalNote for this specific request that would make a big impact on his operations: tracking the adoption and amendment of building codes across the United States. The FiscalNote Professional Services team got to work and, together with Loyer, created a new product offering: the FiscalNote Building Codes Dashboard.
With this dashboard, Loyer (as well as other FiscalNote clients) can now monitor and consolidate the development and adoption of the building codes across key states, quickly drill down into each state or code category for more information, and directly connect to the agenda he’s looking for, enabling him to be more efficient and mitigate risk.