How to Future Proof Your Agency?

If you’re like many agency owners, it’s been a tough few years. With the pandemic, you’ve had to alter the way your agency works, adjust for constantly changing and unpredictable business and economic conditions, and make many adjustments on the fly to accommodate and support your team, clients and partners. 

And you’ve likely spent more than a few sleepless nights mulling over the following questions:

● What can I do to keep the agency going? 

● How do I support my team? 

● How do I keep my best clients? 

● How can we work best remotely, hybrid, or whatever the next trend is going to be? 

Now you’ve made it through and have learned many lessons along the way. What you know for sure is that you want to make sure your agency is future-proof and resilient. And more than ever, you want: 

● An inspired & productive creative team who loves coming to work… 

● Happy clients who rave about you and refer you to others… 

● A smooth-running, profitable agency that doesn’t keep you up at night. 

Most importantly, you want to make sure you can maintain all of this no matter what new changes or turbulence the world brings your way. 

So how resilient and future-proof is YOUR agency right now? 

Here are five signs you may need to do some more work to future-proof your agency: 

1. You Have Scattered Information 

If your agency’s workflow and information is stored in incomplete chunks, multiple locations, and doesn’t automatically sync—then the information isn’t serving your business. Searching for scattered information wastes valuable time your creative team could be spending on their real work. Having duplicates of the same information in multiple locations can be unreliable, especially if some documents are updated, and others aren’t. Ultimately, a lack of reliable information puts the foundation of your business at risk. 

2. You’re Missing Data 

Incomplete, missing or out-of-date data impacts your ability to make important business decisions. If you can’t access scheduling, operations or financial data in a timely fashion, by the time a problem or budget overrun is identified, it’s often too late to resolve the issue. Missing data affects every level of a business and causes lost profits. 

3. You Aren’t Meeting Important Goals

If you’re missing important targets, budget milestones and deadlines, then you will likely have stressed out teams, client relations struggles and lost revenue. Failing to meet goals undermines the long-term success and profitability of your business. It further frustrates the team as they feel they’re not winning for the company despite all their efforts. 

4. Your Procedures Are Not Clear 

If your business has inconsistent, cumbersome or multiple processes for creating estimates, managing projects, assigning work, tracking time, coordinating client requests, communicating with the team, and invoicing clients, time is not being well spent, and that costs your business money. Confusing or duplicated procedures increase the likelihood of errors and create unneeded stress. Can you imagine trying to onboard someone new or a few people (scale!) at a time, and there isn’t rhyme or reason to where they can find documented processes? Oh my, to be the new person in that scenario. No thanks! 

5. Your Communication is Broken 

When communication between staff doesn’t flow smoothly, details are missed, information gets lost, there are misunderstandings, mistakes happen, and employees end up frustrated, overwhelmed and burnt out. The lack of a solid and efficient communication system not only eats into profits but it also chips away at morale and initiative. 

Steps You Can Take to Future Proof Your Agency: 

If any of the five signs above sound familiar, one of the best first steps you can take to future-proof your agency is to: 

1. Breakdown your team silos and consolidate all of your scattered processes, systems and workflows into one seamless workflow that everyone buys into and understands, and 

2. Identify all the different technology, software, apps, and spreadsheets your agency currently uses, and replace them all with one centralized all-in-one agency management software and CRM that is used by every single person in your agency. 

When you break down all those silos, streamline your scattered processes and systems, and consolidate your entire workflow into one central agency management software, you don’t just immediately improve processes, productivity and communication – but you will be able to access the single most important key to future-proof your agency: Information. 

That’s right… information. 

By consolidating of those different pieces of technology to manage different agency functions, you’re also centralizing your data in one spot. And when you centralize your data, you’re able to run business intelligence reports – reports that give you the information and insight you need to know exactly what’s happening in your agency right now and make important changes and decisions for the future. 

Here are the top five pieces of information you can access through business intelligence reports that will help you make sure your creative agency is resilient and future-proof: 

1. Team Productivity: Are they happy? Productive? Working on the right things?
2. Client Over-servicing: Are you saying yes too much? Is scope creep eating into your profits?
3. Understanding Profitability: Which clients & projects are most profitable? Why?
4. Retainer Profitability: What’s my burn rate? Are my retainers cost centers or profit centers?
5. Gaining Competitive Advantage: How do I win more work suited to us? Attract more ideal clients?

We’ve created a free guide that shows you how an all-in-one agency management software with built-in business intelligence reporting can help you access the information you need and make the right decisions for your agency: 

DOWNLOAD THE FREE GUIDE NOW 

Your Next Step – A Free Demo & Agency Workflow Evaluation: 

If you’re looking for ways to create a more resilient and future-proof creative agency, contact the experts at Function Point. We can arrange a personalized demonstration where we take a look at your current workflow, systems and technologies, and show you what might be possible for your agency by integrating your workflow with an all-in-one agency project management solution – and suggest some best practices changes that can make a real difference. 

BOOK YOUR FREE DEMO & WORKFLOW EVALUATION NOW