agilimo at a glance:
- Industry: IT security consulting
- Location: Elsenfeld
- ZEP customer since: 2016
- Used for: Proof of performance, project controlling, capacity planning, calculation of fixed-price projects
The initial situation at agilimo
agilimo Consulting GmbH advises companies, corporations, and government agencies on IT security. With a clear stance: IT security "Made in Germany." For its own project management and time tracking, the company long relied on an obvious but inefficient tool: Excel.
Hours were recorded in spreadsheets and sent to clients for signature. Spreadsheet by spreadsheet, project by project. For a growing consultancy, this quickly led to noticeable limitations: there was no overarching project controlling. Determining which employee had booked how much time to which project was, at best, a laborious task and never available at a glance.
The challenges
With the increasing number of clients and projects, the gaps in the Excel solution became increasingly apparent:
- No scalability: Every new project meant new spreadsheets and new manual effort. A process that could not keep pace with agilimo's growth.
- Lack of controlling: It was nearly impossible to determine whether a fixed-price project was profitable or at risk of going off track. Reliable budget-versus-actual comparisons were missing.
- No reliable resource planning: It was impossible to identify bottlenecks, check availability, or see where employees were becoming overloaded based on Excel spreadsheets.
- Lack of reliable proof of service for clients: Clients commissioning the implementation of a company-wide security architecture, for example, often invest hundreds of thousands of euros in consulting, design, and execution, and they expect transparent proof of performance in return. In this context, Excel spreadsheets appeared unprofessional and lacked the necessary transparency.
The combination of a lack of structure and the inability to generate reports prompted agilimo to look for a specialized project time-tracking solution.
Switching to ZEP
When choosing a new solution, it quickly became clear to agilimo that it wasn't just about functionality. As a consulting firm that consistently advises its clients to use European, independent technologies, agilimo wanted to remain credible in its own choice of tools. ZEP fit this vision perfectly: a specialized German solution for project time tracking. No detours through generalist tools or international cloud ecosystems.
agilimo has been a ZEP customer since 2016 and has grown with the product over the years: new features were quickly integrated into their daily routine without the transition requiring any additional effort for agilimo.
Daily life with ZEP today
Simple operation in day-to-day business
For agilimo's consultants, using ZEP is intentionally straightforward: log in, book time, bill. This simplicity is exactly what ensures that time tracking is actually used in daily operations rather than being neglected as a tedious chore.
Analysis as a management tool
For agilimo's management, the analysis of employee time provides the decisive added value of ZEP. Workload peaks are identified early, before individual employees become overloaded. This gives the leadership team the opportunity to add staff or redistribute resources in time, rather than reacting only when it is already too late. This secures not only internal processes and calculations but also a consistently high level of service quality, as employees are not constantly working at their limits.
Calculation reliability for fixed-price projects
Especially for fixed-price projects, structured time tracking makes all the difference for agilimo: the data from ZEP flows directly into calculations, creating a much more flexible and realistic foundation for future proposals.
“ZEP has enabled us to transform into a managed service provider.”
Thomas Edelmann, Managing Director & CTO, agilimo Consulting GmbH
A foundation of trust for clients
Because agilimo can provide its clients with structured, detailed time tracking, client trust has grown noticeably. Transparent proof of performance replaces the need for blind faith—an aspect that is becoming increasingly important in the consulting industry.
Reliable support
Over the years, the collaboration with the ZEP team has also proven to be reliable for agilimo.
"We can only thank ZEP for the fact that we always have a competent ear whenever we have a request, and that our issues and challenges are always resolved quickly and efficiently."
Marcus Heinrich, Managing Director & CEO, agilimo Consulting GmbH
Digital sovereignty and the CLOUD Act
For a company that advises its clients on IT security "Made in Germany," the origin of its own software is no minor detail. Thomas Edelmann, Managing Director and CTO at agilimo, observes recurring misconceptions in day-to-day client interactions:
"This is actually a very big topic for our clients. There are a lot of misunderstandings because many clients say: 'It's on European servers, so I don't care.' But what matters is where the provider's headquarters are located, because the US CLOUD Act obliges US providers to hand over data to US authorities, regardless of the server location."
Thomas Edelmann, Managing Director & CTO, agilimo Consulting GmbH
This is precisely why agilimo consistently integrates only software from European companies into its own tech stack, in order to rule out access by US authorities from the outset.
Marcus Heinrich has also observed that the pressure in this area has intensified recently:
"With the current geopolitical situation, the demand for truly European, German solutions has risen noticeably. For agilimo, ZEP as a German product was therefore the obvious choice, not only for practical reasons but also for strategic ones."
Marcus Heinrich, Managing Director & CEO, agilimo Consulting GmbH
The result for agilimo
- 10–15% time savings in daily work processes thanks to ZEP's structured guidance for employees and simple project time tracking.
- Transformation into a Managed Service Provider: made possible by the reliable data basis from ZEP.
- More flexible, realistic calculation of fixed-price projects through retrospective and current project evaluations.
- Ten years of partnership since 2016, with continuous development on both sides.
About agilimo
agilimo Consulting GmbH is an IT security consultancy based in Elsenfeld. Positioned under the banner of "IT security made in Germany," agilimo helps companies protect themselves against cyberattacks using the best available German and European technologies. The company is led by Marcus Heinrich (CEO) and Thomas Edelmann (CTO).
