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In short:

Drama Queen is a marketing and communications agency with roots going back to the 1990s. With steady growth, the company’s management had the idea that there was room for improvement in management through numbers. There had also been a change in management with the arrival of Matias Mero as the new CEO. Understanding of profitability and cash flow was needed. The partnership with Aamu Partners got off to a flying start and the focus was kept on monitoring business development.

By the end of summer 2020, the benefits of the partnership were already clearly visible. Among other things, the understanding of team-specific profitability had improved and enabled a new outlook for the future. Ultimately, the benefits of the partnership with Aamu are noticed all the way in the boardroom, saving time from reporting to the essentials – running the business.

Support for business development

Drama Queen was hoping for a more systematic approach to running the business. Visibility was needed both in the analysis of business figures and in the interdependence of work, teams and performance. They also needed tools for regular reporting and board work to facilitate data collection. The partnership with Aamu was expected to tackle these challenges.

As head of the creative agency, Matias Mero does not feel like a numbers person and has found the support provided by Aamu valuable.

“All in all, we have a good feeling about working together. We have got what we hoped for; clarity in developing our business. There has been a good spirit in the work. The Aamu team is down-to-earth, not too consultative – guys like us,” says Matias Mero.

In Mero’s opinion, the Clarity Software has helped him to see the big picture of the business and its development better. The consultant’s interpretation has further added to the understanding.

“Clarity is a clear tool, easy to use and technically functional,” Mero lists the advantages of Clarity. “Now we can get information easier and faster. I can quickly communicate the key points to teams and the board. This has brought clearness and logic to our work,” says CEO Matias Mero.

Concrete improvements over the Covid pandemic

2020 had also been an exceptional year for Drama Queen. During the hectic spring, Aamu Partners also helped Drama Queen to apply for Business Finland funding with successful results.

“The past year has been unusual to say the least, but we will come through the pandemic with our feet dry, at least for this year. Thanks to Aamu, we have gained an understanding of the right things and focused on improving them. All of this will ultimately translate into more efficient operations and, as a result, a healthier business,” says Matias Mero, summing up the benefits of the collaboration.

Moving forward with Aamu Partners

In practice, working with Aamu has brought a number of improvements to Drama Queen’s daily work. According to Mero, the teams can now better see the impact of their work as a whole. This has also been a great help during the Covid year. Collaboration is at its best when the situation pushes us to do our best, to learn and improve our own work along the way. The next step will be to build a model that will allow us to monitor the company’s activities in Sweden from the headquarters in an agile way.

“I think these are the most important improvements: the cash cycle, seeing team performance or efficiency. These used to be harder to verify. We have got what we were looking for from the collaboration, so let’s continue with the same model and see where we can go together,” concludes Matias Mero.

“Working with Aamu Partners is straightforward and efficient. The work is based on the monthly monitoring of jointly developed strategic indicators. From the Board’s point of view, it is important to have an overall picture of the profitability, efficiency and achievement of objectives of both the Finnish and Swedish businesses. Aamu Partners’ monthly summaries are clear and help us to understand the problems and quickly find concrete solutions to remedy the situation,” says Account Director and Partner Minna Koivurinta.