Function Point, Our Culture and the Creative Industry

Our team has been really engaged in writing about our experiences, our culture here at the office and items associated with business management in a creative studio. When I look at the titles of some of our latest posts it gives me some insight into the depth of understanding we have in the space. Managing new sales leads, tracking vacation time, working with multiple operating systems in your firm…deployment of software in a creative agency, all pertinent topics.

All of us are looking to write about items that would be of value on an ongoing basis. That is, we keep educating our team on current user activities, trends and how our clients are using our system in new ways and our performance with clients. Last week we engaged in Second Wind’s Premium Seminar on Management of a Busy Studio. Let’s learn from the best. It is a creative environment where sharing of topics breeds curiosity and inevitably we talk as a team to a deeper level on the items that really spark our interest.

I find curiosity in action somewhat amazing!

The reason I put this up for discussion is directly related to our commitment to using the system to manage our business. Every day each of us in the office has function point up and running in front of us all day long. Here are a few examples of how we use fp to drive your success with the tools:

 1) We use the system estimates for our agreements, we track revenue forecasts with the revenue forecasting capabilities, we manage each of our relationships with all of our prospects and clients, using notes, pinned notes and tasks

 2) When support tickets come in, we make tasks and use the tasks for tracking due dates, workload and our time against each job

3) From a client perspective, we track each client job and review this to see how we are doing regarding our estimates and the profitability of the work over time with comparisons between estimates and actuals

We quite literally use the system to its full capability. Prospecting, new client deployment, estimating, job profitability, task management, time sheets, expenses, and invoices are some of the items we use on a daily basis. We are also using briefs and timelines to help organize our new system development processes. The point is that we use the system with rigor. It is the best way for us to fully understand the system and interaction with it. It comes down to making sure we build a culture that is focused on practicing what we preach. On doing what we are suggesting our clients should be doing in their business.

Culture. It is such an important part of Function Point and building a culture of success is much more than process rigor and I’ll continue speaking to this in future posts.

Chris Wilson | President, Founder and Chief Client Advocate