Unconventional Teams Beat Uncertain Times
Now is the time to invest in design and flexibility.
Our clients in the financial services industry are our canaries in the coal mine of economic trends. In the last few weeks conversations with them have taken a familiar tone.
We’re hearing a lot of words like “hiring freeze,” “business continuity planning,” and “fiscal stability.” Clearly there’s some nervousness about what lies ahead when there are daily stories on inflation and gloomy predictions.
Coalesce is a mere 17 years young and it has already weathered a housing market collapse, a recession or two, and a global pandemic. We have been remarkably resilient for a boutique agency. We’ve learned a thing or two about how to weather storms just like this one.
Our resiliency comes from three core product principles.
They just might work for you too:
1. LEAD WITH DESIGN
Retreating survives the battle but loses the war. Don’t lose sight of design and keep taking risks.
Coalesce is 51% a design and user experience shop.
We have a firm belief that the quality of a product’s user experience design and research determines that product’s success or failure. This is never more true than under adverse conditions.
As budgets dry up we have seen countless companies to try scale down their design teams or to pull back on new initiatives or updates. What’s most painful is when they try to squeeze as much as they can out of their current product at the expense of their users. Conversations move from “customer value” and into “funnel optimization” and in a year the user experience is a tedious maze run through “conversion drivers.”
You cannot force a good product out of a bad one. In a tight market (or a boom) the differentiator is always design and experience. It is certainly scary to continue to push forward because new design and features always carry risk, but it’s also the foundation and soul of product development.
2. CULTIVATE FLEXIBLE DEVELOPMENT
Fuel efficiency beats horsepower in the long run. Create an internal innovation group (or hire one).
Coalesce is 51% an engineering shop.
Our development supports between $125M and $150M of client revenue a year. But we don’t have 100 developers.
What we do have are small and unbelievably-talented pods. When times are easy, having a ton of development horsepower can paper over many issues. But when times are tight, “fuel efficiency” — or what you get for a development hour — is the lifesaver.
We have built multi-million dollar ERP systems with a team of eight and enterprise publishing platforms with even fewer.
For technology to be successful in tight times, it has to be able to move quickly and scale up and down based on need. Some products have hard requirements (eg. medical records management or accounting systems) that require large in-house teams. But almost every company can benefit from having a pod that is able to jump in and build something complex very quickly. That works best when the team can also move into maintenance mode between projects.
We simply build what needs to be built. No more. No less. There is no secret trick. It works because our teams are small and everyone is supremely skilled. If there is a type of magic comes from building the pods in the first place and keeping them together.
3. CARE A LOT.
Coalesce is -2% a math shop (see…it all works out). Our biggest asset is that everyone tries so damn hard. Our shop continues to be resilient mostly because everyone in it is so damn resilient.
It’s strange to listen to the news and yet still be optimistic about the year ahead but at least as far as Coalesce is concerned…I am. We all are.
If you want to chat hopes and fears, give us a ring or a ping at hello@coalesce.nyc. Or visit coalesce.nyc.
(If you’re in NYC or Nashville, we can also come to you.)
