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The Chal lenge Ten years after its inception, Digital Echidna had grown to become one of London, Ontario’s largest and most respected digital media and website development companies. However, after a decade-long journey of continuous growth, founder and CEO Andrew McClenaghan wondered if his company had reached its maximum potential. Was there more he could do with its current business model, or should he create an entirely new business?

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The echidna, or spiny anteater, is an unusual mammal found only in Australia. It has existed as a species since prehistoric times; finding ways to survive while others became extinct. So when Andrew McClenaghan founded his digital media company in 2004 he thought the resourceful and adaptive nature of the echidna made a fitting mascot for his new business. Today, Digital Echidna is one of London’s largest and most respected website development companies, providing content marketing, lead generation, sales support, and content management expertise to a host of customers around the world. Although ten years may be nothing from an historic perspective, it can be an eon for a business in the digital age. But like its mammalian namesake, Digital Echidna has thrived while many of its contemporaries have gone the way of the dodo bird. When we first met Andrew he was justifiably proud of his success, but typical of other small business owners at this stage, wondered what was next. Success had brought with it a growing complexity of solutions-based projects from an ever-expanding base of customers as the reputation of his company grew. In spite of this, he felt that his company might have reached a plateau. Through early conversations with us, Andrew came to realize that managing his business in the same manner that brought success to this point would not advance his company to the next stage of growth. He wanted to create a new, sustainable business model, improve production, and ensure maximum profitability while delivering unique value to his customers. Andrew also made it clear that any remediation required to improve his business must preserve his employee-centric culture. It was very important that staff continue to love coming to work.

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A blueprint for a sustainable organization structure that would support all the necessary growth capabilities was required.

Through exploratory conversations with Andrew and his staff we created a model of his operations that defined the company’s primary value stream and the high-level capabilities required to deliver maximum value to its customers. This provided a context for identifying areas within the organization that limited potential growth, and uncovered opportunities to further increase the value received by customers. It became clear that a more effective project architecture—one that would result in the ability to better understand and capture requirements, and introduce standards and efficiencies to the planning and development activities—would provide the highest immediate value to the business. Driven by customer priorities, and guided by the new project roadmap and playbook, this solution now provides direction and support for the development process, and an effective framework for prioritizing the deployment of resources.

With revenue and profit steadily on the rise, Digital Echidna has significantly increased its throughput and project management capabilities. Andrew is very enthusiastic about the results. He likes to remind us that he frustrated every other consultant he’d worked with, but we were able to find the optimal way to engage with him and his staff to help advance his company to a new level of maturity.

One of the unexpected benefits of this relationship was the ad hoc conversation at the beginning of every meeting. It was great to have a sounding board for my ideas and be able to freely talk about whatever was on my mind. Kind of like a ‘business therapy session’.

The Solut ion A process of identifying areas that were limiting growth, and opportunities to increase profitability led to a shared understanding that a more effective approach to project management would yield the most immediate return-on-investment. Next, the current state of project planning and management capabilities was analyzed to provide the foundation for creating a well-defined project management architecture and roadmap for its implementation.

The Results The formerly ad hoc approach to project planning and management made it difficult to coordinate production with sales and customer demands. This engagement resulted in a production and project management process that is agile and able to scale on demand. With the company now poised for exponential growth, Andrew can count on maximum throughput.

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