Case studies
Fuse8 was one of the country's rising digital agencies: Leeds-based, turnover over £5m, more than 70 staff and a Digital Agency of the Year win behind it, with online delivery straining to keep up. I reviewed the whole operation on a short contract, then joined as head of the online service to fix it, bringing in agile delivery and recruiting three project managers to run it. The agency's largest project, the Charles Church new-homes website, shipped on time and to budget in three months and opened the door to the wider Persimmon Group.
Fuse8 was one of the country's rising digital agencies, based in Leeds, with a turnover of more than £5m, over 70 staff and a Digital Agency of the Year win at the DRUM Awards behind it.
Success brought the classic problem. The online projects ranged from small marketing sites to very large builds, delivered with a development team in Russia, and the delivery process had not kept pace with the growth.
Projects were harder to run than they should have been, and that is exactly the point at which margin, momentum and client confidence start to slip.
I came in first on a short contract to review the online operation properly, before anyone changed anything. That meant sitting down with the teams in the UK and in Russia, understanding how they actually worked and what got in their way, and reviewing the lot: the systems, the methods, the protocols, the projects, the reporting, the proposals, the costs, the financials and the communication between them. It produced a full report, a presentation to the directors and a clear set of recommendations.
Then I joined as head of the online service to put those recommendations into practice. I recruited three project managers and an account executive so the team had the capacity to deliver well rather than just fast. I introduced an agile way of working, chunking projects into two to three week rollouts, which kept momentum up and let clients see real progress instead of waiting months in the dark. I brought in proper resource planning, and a way of reusing code from previous projects that the agency had never done before, so good work stopped being thrown away. I trained the non-web account managers in how a website actually gets delivered, and I sat in on the pitches, where the tighter delivery story helped win new business.
The agency delivered its largest project, the Charles Church new-homes website, on time and to budget in three months, ready for the spring buying season. That success led directly to more work from the wider Persimmon Group.
The chunked, agile approach gave clients faster and more visible progress, code reuse cut wasted effort on every project that followed, and three new project managers gave the team the capacity to hold its quality as it grew.
The harder efficiency and margin figures sat inside the agency and are not mine to publish, but the direction was clear: delivery went from a drag on the business to something that helped win it.
Agencies almost always grow faster than their ability to deliver, and it shows up as inconsistent projects, thinner margins and nervous clients. The fix is rarely more talent alone. It is a delivery process people actually follow, the right project managers to run it, and the discipline to reuse what works. Get that right and delivery stops being the thing that holds the agency back and starts being the thing that wins the pitch.
This is one engagement in detail. The same pattern across several agencies, and what it costs when nobody fixes it, is in helping digital agencies deliver better.
The review behind this is get-gain-grow. On the pattern across the sector, see agency audit: expectations vs reality.
Because the fix has to survive the people who live with it. The short review contract meant sitting with the teams in the UK and in Russia to understand how they actually worked before anything changed, which is what made the recommendations land when I came back to implement them.
Momentum, and visibility. Clients see real progress rather than waiting months in the dark, and problems surface inside a fortnight instead of at a milestone. It is also what made the three month Charles Church delivery predictable rather than hopeful.
Because the constraint was delivery, not capacity to build. Three project managers and an account executive gave the team room to deliver well rather than just fast, and that is what let quality hold while the agency kept growing.
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