Coping with agency disruption – how to deliver new levels of service & excellence

When you work in one of the most dynamic and competitive industries on the planet (I am of course talking about the world of advertising and marketing), one of the things you can’t help noticing is the sheer volume of new platforms, tools and concepts that come into being every year. With them comes a whole range of new challenges and the obvious question of, do we need to be offering this at our agency? If you are to stay at the forefront of the industry or at least remain highly competitive and keep your clients happy – the answer is nearly always ‘yes’. But as your service offering grows and each project becomes more and more complex, how do you continue to ensure that your projects are completed on time and remain profitable?

1. Automate your project journey

Sure every project is different but that doesn’t mean they won’t follow a similar journey. At the beginning, you’ll have the brief, then you might draw up concepts before moving forward to delivery and ultimately project sign-off. In between there will be a host of other stages depending on the type of project you’re running. By using pre-defined project templates (created by you) you can automate your project journey or processes, allowing team members to clearly see exactly what is required of them and when. In addition, managers can identify when a project a running off course and most importantly, why. This eliminates the need for constant communication and allows both parties to concentrate on the work at hand.

2. Manage your resources effectively

Of course having a project journey is all well and good, but if your chosen resources are stacked up with work and have no time to complete the tasks, your project won’t be going anywhere fast. Having clear visibility of your team member’s workloads then is essential if your project is going to finish on time and on-budget. With upfront visibility of the resources available, you can manage your client’s expectations and choose alternative resources to speed things up if necessary.     

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3. Avoid over-collaboration

Remember the saying “too many cooks spoil the broth”? Well, one of the biggest challenges when it comes to complex projects is over-collaboration. Let’s say you’ve got 7 or 8 different skills sets coming into the project at different points in the journey. Do they really need to be involved in all of the communication and decision making from the very beginning? Probably not. Yet if you do invite them, they’re likely to get involved and that will needlessly slow down your project. At the very least, they’ll be distracted from whatever project they should be working on and that will impact on your other clients too. By clearly defining when each resource is required to get involved in a project and not clouding the waters by involving them before that point, you’ll need less meetings, you’ll make decisions quicker and your overall project time will shorten.

A really good agency management software tool such as Screendragon will allow you to do all three of the above with ease. By using our unique platform – you can ensure that not only will your clients be happy because you’ve completed their project to a high standard ahead of schedule, but your team will also be less distracted, less stressed and more able to produce a higher standard of work.

To find out more about our agency management software, why not book in for a personalised 30-minute demo with a Screendragon expert today.