Speakers: John Loyer, Head of North American Government and Public Affairs, Somfy Group
John Loyer: The sheer depth and breadth of the data that they have access to and then disseminate, curate, and send our way. In the past 20 years, I've used practically every service on the market for issues management, legislative tracking, regulatory tracking, et cetera, and only FiscalNote has been able to deliver to me time and time again exactly what I want, exactly what I asked for. And then there's a team of professionals who will sit down with you and go through those results and make sure that they are meaningful to you, and help you understand what they mean on a very, very regular basis. With access to that type of information at the local, state, federal, and international levels, you have an invaluable resource at your disposal. And that's what sets them apart. Accuracy, quality, and quantity — full stop.
John Loyer: I'd take it off the fence. You are paying other services and they may or may not be as expensive, they may be less expensive. It doesn't matter. What you're paying for is access, quality, quantity, and accuracy. And I promise you you are getting information from your current vendors that you're unhappy with if you're anything like me. And so bottom line, I've used FiscalNote for almost a decade and that's through a couple different employers and a couple different contracts. I will tell you that there is no other service that provides you with the level of information that you need as quickly as you can get it, and then helps you understand it more so than FiscalNote. Get off the fence.
John Loyer: Early on in the pandemic, I was approached by my employer. They were challenged by the fact that other industries were being named as essential services and they wanted similar treatment at the local, state, and federal levels. I was head of state and local government affairs for this organization. We had already been using FiscalNote but we partnered with them to give us a bird's eye view into what governors were doing in all 50 states and the district of Columbia, and at the federal level, in terms of shutting down various industries, various services, at the beginning of the pandemic. And what we wanted to do was have the particular industry that I represented at the time, declared as an essential service. With the help of FiscalNote and their access to governor's executive orders, and "being in the room" while those executive orders were being discussed, was the goal of this "campaign" that I'd been challenged to create and manage. We used a very large coalition that I was managing nationwide, we used our issues management access through FiscalNote, and we were able to get into 37 different governors executive orders and the district of Columbia that the industry that I represented was an essential service. This was part of the construction industry. When you saw cranes turning during the pandemic, that was the work we did. And part of the success of that was because of our relationship with FiscalNote. 10 other states uh did not shut down at all, three states shut down completely, but one state carved out an exemption for the particular industry that I was representing in the construction world. So in terms of success, that industry continued to thrive during the pandemic, partly because we had access to what FiscalNote offers.
