The changing face of 21st Century companies

Being a WordPress Agency.

As every facet of doing business is changing, the good old days are most definitely gone. The shape of our digital agency in 2015 has little in common with how we looked in 2005.

And here is what we’ve found as we’ve grown from being a 20th century start-up into a frictionless 21st century organisation.

Of course, the rise of the Internet has been the primary driver, providing fast access to information, skills and money. This is the much-lauded “frictionless economy” that occupies the minds of modern-day economists.

This has changed, beyond our wildest dreams, relationships with suppliers, clients, assets, workflow and staff. In fact, everyone and everything we deal with has changed in the last decade.

Modern-day organisations own less, employ fewer people, out-source core elements and automate more. For example, Uber is the world’s largest vehicle service yet owns no cars. Facebook is the largest news portal on the planet but doesn’t employ any journalists.

And in that way we are no different, we no longer own any web servers, offices, infrastructure, applications, phone systems or company cars. Our value is no longer in our balance sheet, but in the value we create and maintain across all our relationships.

The tools needed for the business are now on-demand; web-servers, project management, web-build, design, transport, collaboration space, content, infrastructure, logistics, resourcing and support.

This may sound a wonderful place to operate, and in many ways it is, but in this new economy there is no protection from new and distruptive models. The modern organisation needs to be able to adapt and stay agile to the needs of all it’s relationships.

The accelerated “darwinian model” of adaptability and agility over size and strength will see many dinosaurs dyings off and disruptive business models unseating traditional business thinking.

Today, we’re rewarded by our creativity, flexibility and agility as the 20th century model of growing a monolithic company built around protectionism, secrecy and linear business plans is dead.

For us to get here has been a near 20 year journey – and it’s not over yet. The digital agency space will change again in the next few years and we’ll stay agile and adapt to those changes.