With Autodesk’s Business Success Plan, Gruner turned software management into a data-driven advantage, using real-time insights and automation to optimize license usage, reduce inefficiencies, and ensure the right tools are always in the right hands.
Gruner is one of Switzerland’s leading independent engineering consultancies, delivering projects across the built environment since 1862. With more than 1,100 employees in 39 locations worldwide, the company provides end-to-end services in building construction, infrastructure, and energy—from planning and design to commissioning, refurbishment, and reuse.
The company works on more than 5,000 projects annually and relies heavily on digital tools to support this scale. Around 600 employees use Autodesk software, with a mix of subscriptions and Flex tokens. Managing that usage—and ensuring each investment delivers maximum value—has become an essential part of how Gruner grows efficiently.
Gruner’s goal was straightforward: create a repeatable, data-driven way to provision and adjust access across thousands of project needs. But achieving that required a nuanced approach. Some team members need continuous access to Autodesk tools for project work, making a traditional subscription the most reliable fit for continuous use. Others only need occasional access, making Autodesk Flex, a prepay model based on tokens, a better fit.
The challenge was deciding who should be on which plan—and when. Gruner wanted to monitor usage and adjust assignments at the end of subscription periods, balancing the flexibility of tokens with the predictability of subscriptions.
“We needed a way to analyze usage patterns and make informed decisions about whether a user should be on a subscription seat or Flex,” says Jan Partsch, BIM Manager in Gruner’s Digital Business Solutions team. “The aim was always the same: deliver the tools people need but do it in the most consistent and scalable way possible.”
To make that scalable operating model possible, Gruner leveraged an Autodesk Business Success Plan and worked closely with their Customer Success Manager (CSM), Andreas Bracht.
A Business Success Plan offers several advantages, including more granular usage data, advanced administration features like directory sync, and access to reporting APIs—all critical for Gruner’s governance and scalability goals.
“We wanted to optimize our license usage based on real usage patterns, and the reporting API gives us far more data to work with,” Partsch says. “That data is the foundation of everything—it’s what allows us to build our dashboards and make smart decisions.”
With technical support from the Autodesk Platform Services (APS) team, leveraged and coordinated by the Autodesk CSM, Gruner’s Digital Business Solutions Team implemented automated data loads through the reporting API and developed a custom dashboard to track license usage and utilization trends in real time. “The most important thing for me is really to be there for the customer to help them achieve their goals,” Bracht says.
The dashboard visualizes usage and adoption under current conditions and simulates coverage outcomes if everyone were on subscriptions or Flex, and highlights utilization patterns and access-model fit.
“We simulate what usage patterns look like if everyone were on tokens and how they’d be if everyone were on seats,” Partsch says. “Then we compare those with our actual costs, where we’re mixing both. This shows us how close we are to the theoretical optimum.”
The dashboard also enables a user-by-user view, flagging individuals whose usage patterns suggest they’re on a suboptimal access model.
“For example, we can see if a user is burning a lot of tokens per day—if that cost is much higher than it would be under a subscription, then we know it’s time to switch them,” Partsch says. “We can go from the most inefficient users to the least inefficient and make targeted adjustments to improve overall allocation.”
—Jan Partsch, BIM Manager, Digital Business Solutions team, Gruner
Gruner’s approach is both reactive and predictive. In some cases, decisions are made based on past usage patterns. In others, the company anticipates upcoming project demands and adjusts proactively.
“If we know a user is about to join a project where they’ll use Autodesk products intensively, we switch them to a subscription in advance,” Partsch explains. “But if the future isn’t certain, we rely on tracked data and make decisions based on what we see.”
The dashboard isn’t just a back-office tool; it’s part of a company-wide effort. Gruner makes the dashboard available to all business unit heads so they can monitor their own team’s license utilization and access-model fit on a yearly, monthly, weekly, and even daily basis. “It’s a team effort, not a top-down decision,” Partsch says. “We’re committed to democratizing access to data and business intelligence for informed decision making on all relevant levels. Sometimes, that even means sharing ‘wrong’ decisions that everyone can learn from. We prefer that to implementing top-down control—because that way everyone gets better.”
That said, Partsch emphasizes that meaningful governance and planning require a longer-term view. “It only really makes sense to base decisions on three to six months of data,” he says. “If you try to decide based on one or two months, you risk reacting too quickly.”
For Gruner, choosing a Business Success Plan was a key decision. The depth and quality of usage data available through the reporting API—combined with directory sync and advanced administrative tools—made it possible to build an accurate, automated, and scalable operating model.
In addition to working with the CSM, they also took advantage of expert coaching that is part of their Business Success Plan. “We had very positive experiences on the administrative side with admin coaching and deployment coaching,” Partsch says. “We're now also having our BIM managers look deeper into the expert coaching for operational procedures and operational workflows, how we can adapt them and tailor them to our needs.”
Of particular value is the ability to get coaching in local languages. “As a Swiss company, we always have to deal with French, German,” Partsch says. “It is a big win to be able to have coaching available directly in those different languages.”
“I highly recommend going with a Business Success Plan,” Partsch says. “If you want to scale software product usage effectively on a company level, you need optimized digital processes and reliable data sources. A Business Success Plan gives you that. It connects Active Directory groups, ensures correct user data, and not only streamlines the process of opening and closing Autodesk accounts—it fully automates it, which makes it fully scalable. Without a system like this, you end up with bad data, time-consuming data cleansing, and manual processes that can’t scale.”
—Jan Partsch, BIM Manager, Digital Business Solutions team, Gruner
By continuously analyzing usage and adjusting license access models, Gruner has significantly improved the efficiency of its Autodesk software environment—gains that are visible in the dashboard.
“We can see that our current setup is already very close to the optimal model,” Partsch says. “The margin between where we are and the theoretical optimum is small, and we’re working to make it even smaller.”
“It helped us reduce inefficiency in license usage from 25% to 15%,” Partsch says. “And this is with a big portfolio, so it’s a substantial improvement. And this basically makes the whole account creation and closure a fully automated and scalable procedure.”
The system also gives Gruner confidence that it’s getting the best possible value from its Autodesk investment—not just today, but well into the future.
“Using Flex tokens and seats in combination, and switching users based on real data, helps us get the most from our investment,” Partsch says. “We’re already on a very good track, and we’re only getting better.”
For a company like Gruner—large, diverse, and digitally mature—optimizing software access at scale isn’t a one-time effort; it’s an ongoing process. By partnering with Autodesk and leveraging the capabilities of a Business Success Plan, Gruner has turned license management into a strategic advantage.
This has resulted in a smarter, data-driven approach that improves predictability and governance, ensures users always have reliable access to the tools needed, and supports consistent delivery as needs change.
“The Business Success Plan and the reporting data behind it are essential for us,” Partsch says. “It’s about making sure we use our software in the smartest, most efficient way possible.”
