Blogs

Boxador joins in

We're very happy to announce that Boxador has agreed to work with Adigami to take our products and services to the next level. Together with Boxador we will define our marketing strategy, work on refining our product design from the inside out, and develop a plan for launching our great product!

Boxador is an Internet technology company based in Los Angeles that is at the forefront of a new movement in software incubation and entrepreneurship. They boast an enormous pool of talent in all facets of software production, ranging from conception and design to development, financing, strategy, marketing and management.

Creators of two web destinations for internet startups -- Listio (www.listio.com) and BrandBucket (www.brandbucket.com) -- Boxador will soon be releasing two products for consumers and small businesses, Favo (www.favo.com) and Setster (www.setster.com).

Don't use Excel to run your agency

It is amazing to see the many different creative ways that agencies are using Excel spreadsheets to manage their advertising campaigns. It seems to me that Excel has become the de-facto business management and metrics application, simply for lack of a better solution.

Sometimes in the heat of building and running a business, the most generic solution seems like the easiest one, but over time these spreadsheets get larger, more elaborate, and unfortunately prone to all sorts of problems. All of the manual processes that go into building up the spreadsheet and charts are not always error-free, and the errors can be hard to uncover. Also, if not properly protected, new errors can be introduced by anyone at anytime.

We are also concerned about all of the hidden costs associated with maintaining data on Excel. Time lost to cell-juggling and vlookup's could be better spent on taking a close look at the analytics and making better decisions about the campaigns themselves. Also, there is the common problem of just too much data -- how do you focus on just the metrics that you need, and stop yourself from getting lost in the details? Training new users, version control, and worrying about backing up the precious data are also issues Excel users are faced with on a daily basis.

Lastly, and often overlooked, is how Excel may be affecting your communication with your clients. Sending a client a spreadsheet with their data is not the most professional way of presenting data. Preparing custom reports can take quite a bit of time, and it requires your clients to adapt to your schedule instead of being able to access their information when they want.