Why agencies are turning into software companies

The short answer

I think AI is pulling code and creative into the same room. For years an agency sold people's hours: ideas, design, production, account management. Now AI agents can do a lot of that work. Someone has to design, build, connect and check them. That's software work. So I think the agencies, and the businesses, that win next will run more like software companies. Systems written down. Tools tested. Data kept clean. People spending their time on judgment, not repetition.

This is my view, from both sides of the table. I studied computer science at SFU and computer systems technology at BCIT, and I was a software engineer in Kyoto. Then I co-founded the digital agency Sofresh with my friend Justin Cohen in 2007. WPP bought our agency in 2012, and I later led Wunderman Thompson Vietnam as CEO, with 100+ people.

What I saw before ChatGPT

Bad data, bad AI. Clients asked us about AI in 2018. Our honest answer was "fix your data". It's still my first answer.
Clicks are not sales. In 2019 our agency built a Messenger chatbot for a global baby brand. People clicked far more than the target. Almost nobody used the coupon. The bot was fine. The leads behind it were not.
Sometimes the right call is less AI. On that plan we used buttons first and kept language AI for later, because back then it couldn't handle Vietnamese well. Today that part is easy. The lesson isn't.

The tools were early, but the pattern was clear: the hard part was never the clever technology. It was the data, the process and the handoffs. That's an engineering problem, and now it's a problem for most businesses.

Why I think the shift is happening now

The work can be written down. Most agency and office work follows steps. Once the steps are written, an AI agent can do many of them. Writing steps is what engineers do.
Handoffs decide the result. One of our project reviews found the real problem: weak coordination between teams, not weak talent. That became my lesson: most failures are handoff failures. In my experience, AI agents fail in the same place: where one step hands work to the next. Fixing that is system design.
Systems protect time. When Sofresh passed 50 people, our makers got interrupted all day, so we added a traffic manager whose job was to say no. Good AI work does the same thing. It takes the interruptions, not the thinking.
Creative still matters. Software without a good idea is just a tool. The winners will put the people who make the idea and the people who build the system at the same table.

What it means for your business

You don't need to become a software company overnight. Start like an engineer:

Write down one process that eats your team's week.
Clean the data it depends on.
Hand one step to an AI agent, test it, and check what it costs against what it saves.
Keep the people on the judgment calls.

That's the work I do now, from the first call to a system that runs every day: advice, architecture, design, setup and implementation. When a project needs engineers, I build the team in Vietnam and run it. I'm the orchestrator.

The research behind this: The Coder Founders, 106 agency deals checked.

Questions people ask

Are agencies becoming software companies? I think many are moving that way. AI agents now do work that people used to bill by the hour, and someone has to design, build and check those agents. That's software work.

Why does an engineering background matter for AI work? Most AI work is not clever prompts. It's writing the process down, cleaning the data and fixing the handoffs between steps. That's how engineers think.

Will AI replace creative agencies? I don't think so. Software without a good idea is just a tool. The teams that win will put the people with the idea and the people who build the system at the same table.

Can you help my business work this way? Yes. I start with how your business runs today, then design and build the AI agents and the team to run them, in Ho Chi Minh City, Vancouver or online.

What does an AI consultant actually do? · Fractional Chief AI Officer · Building an AI team in Vietnam · letstalk@lyvietvu.com