linkyard's year 2019

Christmas and the turn of the year are just around the corner. We are happy to take this opportunity to look back on the year and look ahead to 2020.

International growth with the linkyard cloud

The past year was marked by the continued market expansion of the linkyard cloud throughout the German-speaking region. In Germany, Austria and Switzerland, we were able to welcome many new customers this year - from SMEs to well-known large corporations. In addition to our three clusters in the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland, we are also now operating several systems with a public or private cloud solution on infrastructure provided by the customer as a service in order to be able to meet very special requirements.
At the same time, we are particularly proud to be able to count on an exceptionally loyal customer base. In addition to high operational stability and professional security management, we are particularly often certified as having excellent support. In the coming year, we will now continue to expand our market activities across Europe step by step, and we will also increasingly review cooperation with local Atlassian partners for customer-oriented support in the respective local language.

Growing project business in software engineering and additional consulting priorities

After regularly developing exciting software solutions in the area of digital support and execution of business processes over the past few years, we have decided to further expand our software engineering with this focus.

We have also been able to take on many interesting consulting mandates in the current year. This showed that we have a strong USP through the combination of good project management skills with distinctive conceptual and technical competencies in IT management and architecture. For example, we have advised customers on the strategic realignment of large individual software solutions and their management organizations, supported the design and introduction of identity & access management solutions, or prepared and evaluated several IT procurement processes.

When it comes to mandates in public administration, cross-agency cooperation is very often a central challenge, to which we can contribute our many years of experience in setting up and organizing public procurement associations or the skills in the area of interface management and standardization.

For customers with the need for more agility in management, we have provided assistance with the introduction of modern management methods such as Objectives & Key Results OKR, data-driven decision making and the application of lean management techniques. We supported IT service providers in the area of DevOps and in various cases we were able to simply help bridge staff shortages with ad interim management or the provision of specialist staff in the area of project or test management.

Anyone who has ever applied for a state building permit has been confronted with a wide variety of questions, depending on the construction project: Is the property within the construction zone? Are toxic substances stored? How are energy, water and transport connections planned? For more complex projects, the spectrum covers so many specialist areas that even experienced architects and planners do not have an immediate answer to every question. With the project”Caluma“Has the Adfinis SyGroup AG developed a solution that allows even very complex forms to be implemented electronically and which allows the client to work out the same electronic application together with the various project participants commissioned by it. After the application has been submitted, the review and discussion with the responsible specialist bodies will also take place electronically. Caluma is used in the canton of Schwyz and in the canton of Bern to implement the electronic building permit process and is already productive in both cantons. linkyard ensures technical project management and part of business engineering in both cantonal projects. We congratulate Adfinis SyGroup for the award.

Staff growth

Since the beginning of 2019, Dominique Nagpal and Vanda Mäder joined us as new employees. To this end, we employ a handful of selected specialists from our partner network on individual projects. There are no departures this year either.

Moving to a larger office in Bern

Our team is also expected to grow somewhat next year. We are therefore prompted to move to a new location on Junkerngasse in Bern, a few steps from Bern Cathedral, with significantly more space in December 2019. Have you ever happened to be close by? Just get in touch, we'll be happy to offer you coffee or tea and exchange a few words.

Commitment to society

Within the scope of our capabilities, we strive to contribute to the positive development of our society as a whole. Since this year, we are pleased to welcome the Botnar Foundation - including the organizer of Botnar Challenge to improve health and quality of life through digitization and artificial intelligence - to support Jira and Confluence with professional hosting of their project management tools at special conditions. We are also pleased with the achievements of the Aalen University student racing team supported by us and their e-racing car, which is at the Formula Student Italy finished 8th out of 26 teams. And last but not least, we are happy to give our employees time flexibility to pursue their various teaching activities as well as cultural and political commitments.

Happy holidays and continued success to you!

Anna - Dominique - Ferdinand - Mario - Patrick - Novel - Stefan - Vanda