My article on hours tracking last week had a lot of readers and I received a lot of feedback. A few people, first and foremost Adrian Zimmermann from the Swiss internet agency Snowflake, criticized my thesis and explained their point of view. All very valid arguments in my opinion. The discussion also went in the…
For a long time, I thought that the only way to run an Internet agency efficiently from a cost perspective was to have the most comprehensive controlling possible. In an agency, this must necessarily be based on the time spent by employees on projects. Gradually, however, I am realizing that what should actually be the…
Last week, someone who read my article on the agile company asked me how we at AOE manage to live this agile culture and also manage it economically. The project business is known to be tough, driven by deadlines and stints. Self-determination and corporate democracy don’t fit in at all. That’s true, of course. So…
I’ve had trouble with advertising agencies for as long as I can remember. Be it as a client or in web projects where I worked as a consultant or project manager on the internet agency side. There was always something wrong. For example, designs were delivered that included a whole range of new, fun features…
We all want long-term customers. Partnerships. That’s what we say in every pitch, that’s what we write on our slides. Anyone who has ever started a new company knows how valuable it is to win projects and clients. You want to please all customers as much as possible, keep every customer forever, an “at all…
Over the past two weeks, I have often been asked what characteristics I think leaders should have in the digital transformation phase. Reason enough to summarize a few thoughts on this here
The design of an agency’s product portfolio is rarely a deliberate process. Many agencies have built up their expertise for a product more by chance. The drivers of such a selection were and are usually the preferences of the agency’s developers, but the foundation of the selection is always the market demand for a product….
Before I turn my attention back to technology, culture and corporate management in the next few articles, here’s something a little more mundane. To lighten things up, so to speak :-). Anyone who works in the digital sector and does reasonably well will occasionally receive more or less concrete job offers. The huge shortage of…
Three years ago, I was sitting at a customer event at Zurich’s Paradeplatz one evening. A colleague who had just started at Appway was hosting a launch event together with the management. The audience consisted of decision-makers and influencers from the financial industry. Appway was presented as a client onboarding solution for financial institutions and…
Unfortunately, there are not as many Chief Digital Officers as various studies predicted a few years ago. I regularly meet professionals who hold this position, some officially – but the majority unofficially. What I often experience in these conversations is a strong sense of disillusionment. What initially looked like a position where you could really…