DDSN Interactive

In about 1995 I was working with a colleague in a small (two-person) desktop publishing and multimedia business. We were asked by one of our clients to build a website, which we labored over for months and certainly didn’t make any profit on. That company generated two unsolicited international business inquiries through the website in the coming months, which resulted in millions of dollars of new business for them. So we got excited…

We decided we could sell Australian wine online, shipping local products from boutique Australian wineries to ex-pats and other interested people in Southeast Asia and America. We learned how to buy and sell products, how to package and deliver, how to deal with international product shipping rules and standards, and we designed and coded our own website to promote the wines and delivery services online. (The web part of the business was my main responsibility in the partnership.) Keep in mind: there was no “off the shelf” software in those days, we designed and coded the website ourselves from nothing. It even played jazz and classical music while you browsed the site! We were just youngsters trying something new, really.

As I learned more about being in business, I realized we had developed a new international business concept, designed and established a complex product offering and fulfillment strategy, and created a marketing strategy to go with it. We didn’t even know those words when we started! Suddenly we had newspapers wanting to write articles about us, banks wanting us to trial their new payment system ideas so they could write case studies about us, and big companies (IBM/Lotus signed us up on a deal to promote their new web software) wanting to sponsor us to represent them at international conferences.

I realized that the business world was about to adapt to a new way of communicating, and we could use our knowledge and creativity to help other companies get their operations online the way we did. That’s when DDSN was born. The wine business was great, but digital business consultancy is where my passions took flight, and I was lucky to find others with complementary skills and interests to join the team as it grew.

The dot com boom and crash (remember those times?) were both exciting and challenging, but we survived that with a strong established business model. Recently the business has encountered new challenges just like all businesses in 2020. But because the core of our business is sound, the company remains strong and resilient, and it’s been a delight to be part of.

Our company consists of talented in-house consultants, designers, and developers who work for the clients directly. We partner we some industry experts to strengthen our offerings in certain areas – such as a prominent national network vendor (Nexon) to support our proprietary in-house hosting platform – but the core of our work is always delivered by our DDSN experts.

A few things, but most of all it’s our strong focus on our ability to deliver beautifully designed, fit-for-purpose digital solutions to both smaller and larger customers in creative, strategically minded, sustainable ways, and continue to work with each client to manage and grow those solutions over time. As a small but highly skilled agency, we can deliver similar (usually better) products and services to our customers at incredible prices, compared to bigger agencies that require higher overheads to deliver the same things we can do.

We don’t provide cookie-cutter solutions or simply templated / out-of-the-box designs and software with a “deliver and forget” attitude. Rather, we build on those ideas and work with our clients over the course of years to really understand their business and become part of it. Because of our bespoke approach, we work really well with government clients, associations, and private sector companies who are looking for a partner in business, rather than simply outsourcing some work.

Our flagship content management platform stands out – Acora CMS. This enterprise-class DXP (Digital Experience Platform) is comparable to products at 10x its price, and we can make it available to both large and small businesses because it’s ours.

Our bulletproof private Australian hosting cloud is unique: Most agencies don’t do that in-house – preferring to rely on AWS or Microsoft Azure (which we can also do, if asked) – but we always have.

Deep expertise in a few important but complex specialty areas sets us aside: strategy, accessibility, UX/CX, interface design, analytics, systems integration. Bigger agencies develop these skills so they’re not unique, but we cost a lot less.
Tying it all together is the bow on the top of the package.

Our oldest clients date back to 1997 when the company started. E.g. we designed the first update to the Goulburn Murray Water website in 1997, and we have just embarked on the latest project to overhaul the GMW digital user experience again this year. We measure our client relationships in decades.

All of our clients are repetitive – 100%. That’s simply built into the way we work. Although we can deliver a one-off piece of work (like a website, online system, or mobile app) with great value, we don’t think that way. For us, it’s always about how that system will evolve and move with our client’s needs, and how it gets used and supported too.

Well… Perhaps we have occasionally done a single job without further work if that’s what someone wanted from us. Maybe 100% is a small exaggeration. But not much!

Almost all of our business comes from long-term contracts, repeat business, and referrals. In fact, just quietly: we’re a bit understated when it comes to marketing ourselves to people we don’t already know – because our days are filled with thinking about our clients instead – and so that’s one area in which I’d like to strengthen the company.

As an agile consultancy business, we can work across most business sectors. So we don’t specialize per se. But of course, our offerings suit certain kinds of clients better than others. It’s more about how the client will engage with us so we can learn how to contribute to their business, than having knowledge in any specific business vertical. Over the years we’ve added experience to our portfolio in a wide range of areas – including but not limited to, e-commerce, national commercial brands, government entities, natural resource management, membership associations, nonprofits and charities, educational institutes & residential colleges, manufacturers, and small to medium private sector businesses in different industries.

Typically, clients approach us for website and app design and development, or for hosting and support of an existing system that needs to be improved. Customers also come to us for SEO/SEM work and online marketing solutions.
 

Clients who are ready to graduate from very simple websites to something a bit more advanced, or clients who need a new digital agency partner who is willing to work closely with them, come to us for help.  We are often referred to work if a client has specialized needs, wants to build something that suits their business better than standard systems, or needs custom integration work. We design their website and apps from scratch and host them on our Australian CMS too.
 

Our core services are similar to many digital agencies:

We have deep specialties in some important areas:

Our entire business model is designed around the idea that every client needs specialized support to deploy complex digital marketing and communications systems. So our design and support processes are very client-centric: There is a lot of consultancy upfront, we ask a lot of questions and we do a lot of listening. And during delivery, we do a lot of testing. And after delivery we move into highly active support agreements, so we’re talking to our clients constantly – monthly, weekly, even daily for many of them. Sometimes we develop new skills through research and training, just so that we can deliver what a client needs, especially if they don’t have a facility to do that work through other existing partnerships.

Like many agencies, we use online project management and support tools to assure transparency and flexibility in all our processes – project management tools, help desk, lots of online documentation, etc. The tools are not the most important part though; the tools are only as good as the people who use them. So all our project staff are trained to put ourselves in the customers’ shoes, not to just think about technical or design outputs, but to think about how those outputs help our client, and our clients’ customers get their jobs done.

I believe we have a strong reputation among our clients that we always deliver, whether it’s a difficult project or not. We don’t give up, and we work very hard to see solutions get online. We often receive unsolicited compliments for how hard we worked, or how much we’ve exceeded the expectations of a project. With that in mind, we believe our clients are delighted with our output and services.

Of course, not every project is easy. We recognize that and so do our customers. If we encounter difficulties, we go out of our way to understand those problems and get a great job done anyway. That’s what has to lead to us working with all our customers for years, often decades.

If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well!

In terms of digital tools, we provide similar things to many agencies: an online help desk for query and job tracking, project management tools, online design prototypes and mockups for design work, and permanent visibility of their project work through development and staging systems that are always online.

A good old telephone is also an important tool, though that is changing to video conferencing and online meetings now that our clients are ready to make that leap. We make sure our clients know we’re always personally available for them.

In terms of continuing support, every customer enters into something we call an “engagement plan”. It’s a support plan with monthly performance measurements, which is designed to help the client run their systems, stay up to date with technology trends and design needs, get support where needed, and continuously update and improve their systems through mini-projects and agile development.

And to make sure we’re always available, and work is always progressing. All-time used under that program is closely monitored and transparently reported via timesheets. Our clients know exactly what we’re doing for them.

Different levels of support plan suit different customers of course: some customers just use a few hours a month, others get us more deeply involved.

Our hosting and software support services are fixed costs, with clearly defined service levels.

For our own software Acora CMS, we try to avoid putting limitations on clients because we want them to grow without feeling pain on the way. So we develop very open licensing policies that don’t limit the amount of work that can be done or the numbers of users in a system. For Acora CMS, a fixed price monthly price (on an annual agreement) gets all new features in all new versions, managed upgrades, unlimited new user training, and always-available technical support.

For our monthly engagement plans, we keep the payment structure very simple: it’s based on the time we use. Clients book a certain number of hours to use each month. We give them a significantly discounted hourly rate for that booking. If we use more time, they still get the discounted rate. If we use less time, it goes into a “bank” and can be used later. So it’s not a retainer: clients don’t lose time if it’s not used straight away. The amount of pre-booked time varies based on customer needs: small clients book a few hours, and some clients book a lot of hours. It doesn’t matter what kind of work we’re doing – design, consultancy, development, technical support, marketing – it’s all the same rate.

For project work, we have two primary ways of working, depending on the culture of each individual client… 
If it suits a client, we like to work in an agile fashion. We’ll define broad parameters and deliverables for a project at the beginning, an agreed timeline, and then work in short milestone sprints to deliver the product. Agile projects should include a fixed or capped budget or at least a firm estimate, it’s not an open checkbook. We prefer that because everyone is comfortable it won’t blow out. This approach usually involves monthly payments through the course of the project. The benefit of this approach is that it’s very flexible; we (I mean the team in consultation with the client) can increase or decrease the scope of individual developments along the way, jointly change our minds about design or direction or what will be delivered in the final product, and we can deliver more for the same price because we’re not constrained by so much risk, we can just get on with the work. This approach needs lots of transparency in the project progress, constant delivery of visible work, close project management, and solid trust between us and the client. Existing clients who know us well like this approach, but sometimes a new client is keen on it too.

The other way of working on standalone design and development projects is the fixed price for fixed deliverables model. In this scenario, we do some high-level initial consultancy to create a project estimate. Then we perform deeper project planning and analysis to define the precise deliverables and either confirm or update the estimate, turning it into a fixed price. Since the project has a clear scope and timeline at that stage, payments are either monthly, or staggered through the course of the project based on delivery milestones such as planning, design, development, testing, and launch. This procedure is a bit more rigid and old-fashioned, but it’s easy to understand and common in the market, so we’re happy to work this way.

We are open to all clients. In the past, we’ve struggled a little to make our bespoke service affordable to smaller businesses, but we’ve worked hard to get smarter over time. So in fact, we have recently launched a web development and design plan that focuses on really deep value for small and medium businesses.

Our smallest client might spend about $5,000 - $10,000 to get started, and then about that much per year on business and support services too. But that business is going to get a lot from us, compared to what they’ll get from other options like cookie-cutter solutions or inexperienced small agencies. We’re happy to work at that level over time to support a client’s “business as usual” operations, but we’re even happier if the client grows with us. We support and understand small businesses because we are one.

The clients that incorporate our services more directly into their monthly business operations invest a bit more in the work of course. We don’t take on massive projects (though we’ll consider being a contributor with the right partnerships in place), but we can work with clients who need serious support up to about $250k per year – those clients are able to work with us like their in house digital team, or even as an augmentation of their in-house marketing or digital team if that’s suitable.

Almost exactly what I outlined in the previous answer. We started some small businesses up with $5,000 websites and marketing/CRM solutions. We built a web / mobile app/marketing / alumni portal/student management platform for a residential college at a major university for about $125k in project costs. We are running agile design, development, hosting, and digital support contracts (with monthly work and mini-projects included) with various clients ranging between about $25k / year and $150k / year in spending.

This might sound slightly strange for a strategically-minded agency, but we see ourselves doing similar things in many ways. We’re happy with how the business works, and we’re happy with our clients. We’d like to do a bit more of the same stuff, so we do plan to grow our team and add some new skillsets, and we intend to approximately triple in company size. But we don’t want to be a “big” agency and lose sight of our smaller customers. The business owners (including me) are focused on the quality of life involved in running a quality business, rather than being rich and famous. 😉

Business and technology will evolve during that time of course. In the same way that we adapted from “website designers” into a true integrated digital agency in previous decades, we’ll innovate to shift our servicing strategies in an agile way to keep pace with those things. It’s hard to say exactly what that looks like of course, but we’re pretty sure that there’ll be a need for us to design and consult about digital systems for the foreseeable future (at least until the AI’s take over).

While the agency engine ticks over, we are using our expertise to develop SaaS and online solutions that are designed to deliver some of the value that our agency provides on a small scale direct to individual customers through our people on a wider, more automated scale. We are strengthening existing and creating new online offerings in the areas of accessibility, content management, advanced website/mobile app/intranet management, marketing/business analytics, and online marketplaces. Some of these products will probably spin off as separate businesses.

We’ll become a Bcorp company – even though we behave like one now, there’s a lot of paperwork to do! And we’ll invest in other socially-minded corporate plans.
And although we give a lot to charities and communities through our project work now, we’d like to widen what we contribute to society too.