linkyard's year 2019

Christmas and the New Year are just around the corner. We would like to take this opportunity to look back on the year and to make an outlook to 2020.

International growth with the linkyard cloud

The past year was marked by the further market expansion of the linkyard cloud in the entire German-speaking area. 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 now operate 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 even very special requirements.
At the same time, we are particularly proud to be able to count on an exceptionally loyal clientele. In addition to the high operational stability and professional security management, we are often praised for our excellent support. In the coming year, we will now gradually expand our market development to the whole of Europe, whereby we will also increasingly consider cooperation with local Atlassian partners for customer-oriented support in the respective national language.

Growing project business in software engineering and additional consulting focal points

After we have regularly developed exciting software solutions in the field of digital support and handling of business processes over the past years, we 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. These showed that we have a strong USP by combining good project management skills with distinctive conceptual and technical competences in the area of IT management and architecture. For example, we have advised clients on the strategic reorientation 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 procedures.

In the case of public administration mandates, inter-agency cooperation is very often a central challenge, to which we can contribute our many years of experience in setting up and organising public procurement associations or our skills in the field of interface management and standardisation.

For clients with the need for more agility in leadership, we have assisted in the introduction of modern leadership 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 easily bridge personnel bottlenecks with ad-interim management or the provision of skilled personnel 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 building project: Is the property located within the building zone? Are toxic substances stored? How are energy, water and transport connections planned? In the case of more complex projects, the spectrum ranges across so many specialist areas that even experienced architects and planners do not have an immediate answer to every question. With the "Caluma" project, Adfinis SyGroup AG has developed a solution that allows even very complex forms to be implemented electronically and that allows the client to work out the same electronic application together with the various project participants it has commissioned. Once the application has been submitted, the review and discussion with the responsible specialist departments also takes place electronically. Caluma is being used for the implementation of the electronic building permit procedure in the Cantons of Schwyz and Berne and is already productive in both cantons. linkyard is providing the technical project management and part of the business engineering in both cantonal projects. We congratulate the Adfinis SyGroup for the award.

Increase in employees

Dominique Nagpal and Vanda Mäder joined us as new employees at the beginning of 2019. We employ a handful of selected specialists from our partner network in individual projects. There are also no departures this year.

Move to larger office in Bern 

Next year our team will probably grow a little bit as well. Therefore, we see ourselves induced to move to a new location in December 2019 at Junkerngasse in Bern, a few steps from the Bern Cathedral, with considerably more space. Are you by chance in the vicinity? Just get in touch, we will gladly offer you coffee or tea and exchange a few words.

Commitment to society

Within the bounds of our possibilities, we strive to contribute to the positive development of our society as a whole. We are pleased to support the Fondation Botnar - among others organizer of the Botnar Challenge to improve health and quality of life by means of digitalization and artificial intelligence - with professional hosting of their project management tools Jira and Confluence at special conditions. We are also pleased about the achievements of the student racing team of the University of Applied Sciences Aalen and their e-racing car, which we supported and which finished 8th out of 26 teams in the Formula Student Italy. And last but not least, we are happy to give our employees the time flexibility to pursue their various teaching activities as well as cultural and political commitments.

Happy holidays and good luck to you too!

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