For many, marketing is simply the act of promoting a product or service. However, this is not the case for Kobi and Daniel of Eleven Digital who see marketing as not simply a matter of communicating or pushing information – it is also about connecting.
Having previously worked at digital marketing agencies, Kobi and Daniel noticed that many businesses in Asia primarily focus on the use of technology when marketing, but would not pay equal attention to forming connections with their target audiences.
Wanting to share their experiences and knowledge, Kobi and Daniel founded Eleven Digital with the goal of helping organisations design, build and maintain long lasting relationships with their clients.
Filling the Gap
“We saw gaps in the marketing coordination area in Asia and wanted to develop our clients’ marketing platforms with features that can better support their activity in the Asian markets.” One such gap Kobi elaborated on was that “many businesses did not have multimedia messaging services that allow them to effectively market to audiences in China and Eleven Digital is helping solve this issue.”
Since the founding of Eleven Digital in early 2019, the business has already achieved considerable success and continues to evolve. Besides providing digital marketing solutions, Eleven Digital now offers the provision of knowledge based services, such as campaign management solutions.
“We originally focused on developing marketing cloud platforms, building these systems for companies, customizing them and future proofing these systems. We now can also do strategic planning for companies in regards to their digital marketing strategy.”
Interestingly, this success has brought about its own host of issues, primarily the need to invest in and adopt better systems that can keep pace with Eleven Digital’s rapid growth.
The Need for a Better Accounting System
As their business grew, Eleven Digital’s old accounting system was becoming too inefficient and could not support their cash flow analysis. Specifically, it was creating difficulties in understanding the financial state of Eleven Digital.
“We used to use our CRM platform for our invoicing and financing needs – but as it doesn’t support direct feeds from our bank account, the processes were very manual and required lots of human intervention. It wasn’t clear to us what was due and it was hard to keep informed on how our business was doing.”
To address these issues, Kobi and Daniel worked with FastLane to implement, and learn how to use Xero, a cloud-accounting solution. The swap to Xero has resulted in increased efficiency, visibility, and has helped identify a direction for how Kobi and Daniel want to grow their company.
Identifying Opportunities, Improving Efficiency and Changing the Way We Work
“With the analysis that comes with Xero, we’ve realized that we were spending so little and were actually making quite a lot. We did not picture that we could hire this fast, but now that we have access to more up-to-date information, we can now move forward with plans that were initially not possible!”
When asked which Xero features Eleven Digital has enjoyed using, Daniel stated, “We like the bank synchronization feature the most as the bank data goes directly to Xero.” Daniel continued by elaborating that, “it [Xero] has helped us streamline our accounts receivables by providing better visibility on our outstanding payments.”
When asked what other benefits Xero has brought forth, Kobi responded that Xero has changed the way her and Daniel communicate with each other. “One thing that has been great is Daniel and I have more conversations about our revenue stream because it’s been so available to us. It really helps us plan for the future. This information wasn’t hidden, but wasn’t always so present.”
The Future of Eleven Digital
Going forward, Eleven Digital has a lot planned. Apart from meeting their revenue targets this year, Kobi and Daniel have their sights set on becoming the number one digital marketing agency in Hong Kong and are eventually looking at establishing offices around Asia. From the looks of it, it seems like they are on the right path to achieving their goals!
