Standardisation makes you effective — not inflexible

When we get into conversation with new customers, almost always the same sentence comes up: "But we're special." We believe you. We don't dispute that your business has its own patterns, that your customers expect certain things from you, and that your brand strikes a distinctive tone. What we do dispute is that what most people derive from this has to follow: a fully bespoke system.

Our experience from ten years of work with mid-market customers is sobering: ninety-nine percent of the "individual" solutions we find in existing systems are unnecessary. They don't solve a problem that wouldn't also be solved in a standard architecture — they only cost more money, more time, and more maintenance.

Why standardisation was hard for us for a long time

We tell this point with some humility because we've walked the same path. In our first years we did what many agencies do: meet every customer wish with an individual solution wherever possible. That felt right. It felt like service quality. In the end we had a zoo of projects that were each internally logical but had hardly anything in common with each other.

The problem doesn't show on day one. It shows when the security hole comes, the major upgrade is due, the colleague leaves, or the customer needs a maintenance contract. Suddenly every system is a special case. And special cases don't scale.

What standardisation means in our model

Standardised at our place doesn't mean uniform. You don't get an off-the-shelf website. Standardised means: we build on a shared foundation we maintain, test, and develop further. This foundation is visible in our 3-layer model:

Infrastructure layer. Same hosting architecture, same container logic, same monitoring and backup processes. This is the area where individuality brings you nothing — and costs us endless time.

CMS base layer. A clearly defined TYPO3 base configuration with our curated extensions, security policies, and deployment processes. Nothing gets tinkered with here. Things get built here.

Project layer. Exactly here happens the individuality you actually need: your design, your templates, your integrations, your editorial processes.

This separation is the precondition for being able to offer a service we call CMS as a Service at all — with guaranteed maintenance windows, reproducible upgrades, and reliable operations.

What you get from this

Standardisation looks less glamorous in a presentation than a fully bespoke solution. In your daily life the picture flips. Concretely, you gain three things:

Speed

Because we don't start from zero every time, we can deliver faster. A new microsite launch, an additional client, another language — in a standardised setup these are questions of weeks, not months. Your marketing thereby gains a lever many don't expect.

Quality

Standardisation means we fix sources of error across a hundred-plus systems once, and don't have to look for them a hundred times. That makes operations more reliable. You have fewer incidents, and when one comes, the resolution is shorter.

Reliability in knowledge

An underrated effect: new colleagues on your side and ours find their way around in standardised systems faster. Documentation works. Runbooks have effect. Handovers are no longer the private affair of individuals. That's probably the most important point that rarely shows up in efficiency calculations — and yet makes the difference over years.

Where real individuality makes sense

Don't misunderstand us. There are places where individuality isn't only sensible but essential. An editorial process that fits exactly your house. An integration into a specialist system no other organisation in Germany uses the same way. A brand expression that's recognised immediately. There we invest deeply.

The point is: we invest your budget where it makes a difference. Not where it's simply consumed because nobody had the conversation about standards.

Standardised individuality as a guiding principle

We call this stance internally "standardised individuality". The term sounds like a paradox but describes pretty exactly what we do. Standardisation creates the foundation. Individuality emerges where it meets the foundation and shows itself as the trademark of your business.

This principle isn't a product we sell. It's a working stance that has proved itself across many projects — with us and with the customers who go along with it.