MMT Review 2021

The year is slowly coming to an end. To me this mainly means time for reflection, rest with my family & charging of batteries for a brilliant 2022 to come.

2021 has been an encouraging year for us at MMT. After taking some long-term directional decisions in 2020, this year has all been about setting things up & building the fundament, we aim to grow on over the next years. While our ambitions are big, we expected this to come with multifold new challenges, bigger hurdles than before on our way & at times maybe even the need to decline a client project. Yet, looking back, it did not feel like that at all. And we actually accepted all client briefs & tenders. From the beginning of the year on, our teams have been pumped with energy. Energy that was put into action in clear & very smart ways. So…it was not hard…it more often was fun. Fun to see how each colleague was able to grow with their tasks, fun to see how the colleagues worked together so well & even more fun to see what achievements we were able to make as a company. And this happened across the board. I will not be able to talk about all the great achievements of this year. They are just too many. But there are a few I want to put a focus on. As these will also pave our further direction for the next years.

Looking at our website now is inspirational & really insightful. And I must admit. This had not been the case before… We have worked on our brand, branding, positioning, products & so much more. And now this is comprehensively presented on our new website. Kudos to our marketing team for investing so much heart, spirit & sweat into bringing this new piece to such an energetic & powerful life!

Connected to this, I want to put emphasis on the many articles the whole team has been able to write & do great research on. Not only does this show how smart & cool our team is, but it also shows their engagement with our topics & our company.

We have almost been able to do weekly updates to our blog & thus to our dear followers on LinkedIn that have grown from ca. 200 to now ca. 700 & the trend is our friend. The engagement rates with our articles are a great recognition of this work. Cannot wait to read & share more from the team.

The face to the client has transformed even further with our teams growing in client services. Implementation & support has been a thing for us through the years. What is new & has worked out very well, is our project management on the tremendously growing adhoc & mostly data intelligence-led projects. The whole setup, team & ways of working have been adapted to this new pillar of our work. And I am very proud to see the LONG list of projects that we have been able to successfully deliver to our clients in 2021. From huge RFPs & Mercury implementations to custom (marketing) dashboards via Scout, to data connector services via Bridge or media/marketing attribution solutions via Scope. Our service portfolio is strong now. And our client service team is just as well. Well done!

Now a few words about our “heart application” of Mercury. Looking into our long list of Epics & Issues is just calming. At least for me. To me, this shows, that we are not tired, not resting & not out of ideas. And neither are our clients. While many, newly deployed features are „just support in the everyday“ work, all of them are valuable to our clients. And sometimes even unique. How fast & how well we have e.g. deployed a solution for the new digital tax is just outstanding. I have not seen a comparable solution anywhere else yet. Mercury has become so powerful through the years & it just keeps growing in-depth & wide. Our upstream API to delivery services such as adservers or DSPs has gone live in its first iteration early this year. Until now, a lot of our client’s feedback has already been taken into account & the service keeps on supporting more & more parts of the process. Partially even automating it. I am already excited for the next iterations to come! We have gone live with our „Zielwertrechner“. A feature that was on the To-Do-List for long. But never in a prio spot. Now it is live & already saves many hours across our clients. Really cool!

Our „Objectives“ Module is ready in its first iteration. This is really big for us & will allow us to support clients in completely new dimensions as of 2022ff. Right now we are looking for the right beta partners to test this new module & already have great ideas to improve this module even further. Words cannot describe how much excitement this triggers & how much energy this fuels in our teams.

For 2022 we will continue to rock the area of MMPs & software to facilitate the media & marketing sphere. Our Scope Intelligence will grow further into our other applications & provide e.g. more (semi)-automated recommendations/actions. In the first half year of 2022 we will build-out our module for inventory owners, intermediaries & thus rather the sales side of media/marketing. This will be a huge step forward for us. And we are confident to grow even further as an enabler for a simpler, more efficient & most importantly effective media market for buyers AND sellers. Across all channels. Our position is good. And we will continue to lead the market. Innovative, agile & smart.

Now that I have talked a lot about client-facing projects, I want to focus on an area that is not so visible, but that has most probably been our biggest priority in 2021.

With the new, updated & increased offer to market, we of course also had to adapt our technological backbone. And touching this, we have decided to restructure, modernize & further strengthen the backbone in general. I have never learned so much about technology & how this interacts overall, as this year. I have never seen an architecture explained so simply from our engineers while knowing that there is so much more to it, than anyone could ever explain to me. I now know very well what Kubernetes does in general, what PRESTO could be used for, how our teams are working in GITLAB, how prototyping can work in KNIME, etc. etc. There are people in our company who can talk about this a lot better than me & therefore I will not continue in this update. But what I want to say here is that I am super proud to know you guys, to have you as colleagues & to know that we are going to rock on for the next years to come. You are amazing!

Talking about technology….I want to send a special „Thank You“ to my management partner Toby!

You are such an inspiration to me. Not only because of your outstanding knowledge & passion about technology, but even more, because you seem to be 100% complementary to me. This might sometimes come with different opinions on things or how to take things on. Yes. But accepting differences & still finding the best possible solution for us & the company is what makes our constellation so powerful & enjoyable. And to me, this culture is also true for the whole company of MMT.

We argue emotionally, we decide rationally & we deliver with passion.

I am still puzzled when I, e.g. look into our Kununu ratings. The gratitude I feel by the trustful, valuing & detailed feedback our employees give, cannot be put into words. Simply wow!

But even the greatest teams, team spirit, clients & projects can be tiring sometimes.

As a growing organization, this is not different. And maybe, it is sometimes even more true in that case. Everyone of us knows that the past two years have been different & more difficult in various aspects. For some of our colleagues even more than for others. We have the privilege to onboard smart minds from across the world & make Hamburg, Germany a home to them. Typically this is pretty easy. We have a modern & enjoyable office space, a great team culture, amazing, interesting roles/tasks, a vibrant & interesting city plus countryside amongst a lot of other great factors. But only very little was typical in the past months. And so it is also true that we failed to make this new home „warm enough“ for everyone. Although the team has established various, often digital alternatives & came up with many cool ideas, it is still true that things are missing. To me, it does not help that basically all companies & individuals have this struggle. As a leader of MMT I feel a huge responsibility to our employees & their wellbeing. Accordingly, we will continue putting a big focus on how to improve further in this area & always be open to implement new ideas into our everyday business lives.

I am 100% confident in our path ahead. We did a lot of groundwork for the years to come. We have great ideas & the best team & team culture to bring these to life.

2022 will be awesome. But until then: reflecting, resting with the family & battery charging.

Have a great & peaceful holiday season. All the best for 2022!

Gunnar