The silent obstacle to growth in SMEs: coordination efforts consume productivity

Meetings, briefings, coordination: In SMEs, more time is often spent on internal and external coordination than on effective work. This article shows why the coordination effort is so high, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises, what hidden costs it causes—and how strategic alignment can become more efficient again.

Alignment

Efficiency

August 23, 2025

When meetings become the main task

"Let's coordinate again" – this phrase is uttered countless times every day in SMEs. What sounds harmless is actually a structural problem: marketing and sales teams lose valuable time due to internal coordination, email chains, approval loops, and agency briefings. Decisions take too long. Opportunities are missed. Growth is slowed down without anyone noticing immediately.

The silent obstacle: coordination effort.

Why SMEs are particularly affected

While large companies rely on structured processes, role assignments, and tool ecosystems, improvisation and pragmatism dominate in SMEs. What is often perceived as "agile" leads to friction losses in practice:

● Unclear responsibilities: Who makes the final decisions? Who provides what information? Who is responsible for what results?

● High operational proximity: In small teams, strategic and operational roles become blurred – leading to additional coordination loops.

● External dependencies: Many SMEs work with agencies, freelancers, and partners. Without a central knowledge base, the coordination effort grows exponentially.

● Lack of a strategic framework: Individual measures often replace the overall strategy. There is a lack of systematic models that create clarity.

The invisible costs of coordination overhead

Coordination costs money – not directly on the invoice, but daily on the calendar. Studies show that knowledge workers in SMEs spend up to 60% of their working time on communication and coordination. It becomes particularly critical when coordination itself becomes the main task.

These costs arise behind the scenes:

● Slowed-down decisions and time-to-market

● Missed opportunities due to lack of prioritization

● Overburdening of employees due to inefficient processes

● Low or unclear impact of individual activities on corporate goals

The more agencies, departments, or touchpoints are involved, the greater the effort—and the lower the productivity.

What is needed now: clarity, context, focus on the essentials

The good news is that the problem can be solved. Not with more numbers or tools, but with a fundamentally different understanding of strategic work in SMEs.

Three principles help to significantly reduce the coordination effort:

Central knowledge base:All strategy-relevant information – from positioning and target groups to KPIs – must be maintained in one place and accessible to all parties involved.
Clear impact chains:Activities should not be planned in isolation, but with specific objectives in mind. This is the only way to see what really contributes to the company's goals.
Visual, context-based control:Instead of endless lists, emails, and briefings, visual models are needed that link target groups, touchpoints, and KPIs – as a common "playing field" for all stakeholders.

These principles are not optional, but a prerequisite for productive work in modern SMEs. Those who implement them consistently not only reduce coordination time, but also increase the effectiveness of all activities.

This makes strategic alignment possible without overhead

The target-centered strategy platform cosmos™ was developed specifically for the requirements of decision-makers in marketing and sales. Instead of exacerbating the problem with even more complexity, cosmos™ reduces the coordination effort through clarity, structure, and target group focus.

The platform is based on a unique workflow that combines three pillars:

TargetLens™:Visualizes all activities from the target group's perspective – including personas, touchpoints, and status displays. This unique view of your entire marketing and sales ecosystem shows you immediately where action is needed and what is already working well.
KPI Universe:Makes impact chains transparent. Each touchpoint and key event is linked to a KPI that shows how strongly each activity contributes to the business goal. This allows you to immediately identify underperformers, blind spots, and dead ends in the user journey.
Agency Knowledge System:Enables seamless collaboration with external partners. LiveLinks allow briefings, positioning, and target group insights to be shared directly—no emails, no PDFs, no chaos. This significantly reduces the effort required for alignment.

The effect: A single weekly meeting often replaces numerous meetings, approvals, and feedback rounds. Decisions are made faster, activities are more targeted, and results are more measurable.

Fun fact: A single weekly is enough

Many cosmos™ users report that after introducing the platform, they were able to reduce their internal meetings and reporting by up to 70%—without any loss of information. The reason: clarity replaces coordination.

Conclusion: Strategy begins with relief

If your teams spend more time coordinating than implementing, it's not a cultural problem—it's a structural one. The first step toward a solution is clarity: clarity about goals, target groups, touchpoints, and KPIs.

cosmos™ delivers exactly that – not as another dashboard, but as a strategic control system. For SMEs, this means less overhead and more impact. And above all, growth that doesn't get stuck in the meeting room.