Three easy steps to improve productivity at your media production agency

Productivity is essential to keeping media production agencies alive and thriving, so maintaining it at a high level should be a priority.

Low productivity can have a knock-on effect to your team’s morale and impact your profit margins and project success, therefore it’s important to have a system that helps your staff transform into productivity powerhouses.

There are three simple steps you can take to proactively increase productivity across your agency. These steps are based on streamlining internal processes and providing clearer direction to staff members so they can work more efficiently to contribute to the overall success of your agency.

Step 1: Optimize staff resource allocation and utilization

One of the most effective ways to boost productivity is by resource allocation. Getting a clear overview of your employees’ workloads helps you to determine who can take on more projects and who is at capacity. Allocating projects to staff members who are already working to capacity risks them making mistakes and burning out, compromising the quality of their work. Likewise, your agency’s morale could be negatively impacted if it’s clear that certain staff members are being overloaded while others sit idle with plenty of spare time to take on extra projects. Getting the balance right is crucial to boosting productivity in your agency.

Function Point’s agency management software provides valuable insights into staff utilization for resource planning. You can instantly see which employees are billing to capacity compared with those who have space to take on more projects. This helps you to allocate projects and resources more efficiently so that your staff members can work at an optimum level, without feeling overwhelmed with work or bored with their lack of active projects.

Function Point agency software also provides a reporting tool that can be used to make sure employees are placed in areas where they excel. This tool lets you plan for upcoming projects so that you have the resources needed to complete productions on time and within budget.

Step 2: Provide clear project briefs

Your employees need a comprehensive brief from the outset to carry out successful projects. This means making sure they know exactly what they’re producing, what resources they’ll have access to, what key messages or content they need to convey, what talent will be involved, what locations will be used, and much more.

Without the broad range of information needed to complete a project, you will waste time and money. Your staff members will become frustrated and won’t be able to deliver a high level of service. Your clients may leave unsatisfied or you’ll have to eat into your profit margin to complete the project to the client’s satisfaction. Your agency’s reputation may be damaged with clients, talent, and third-party providers such as studios. It could cost you dearly.

To avoid this and ensure productivity remains high, you must distribute clear, detailed briefs to every member of your team so that everyone knows their responsibilities to deliver successful client projects. This in turn reduces the risk of reworking areas of a project, at your agency’s cost, due to a misunderstanding of the brief. And, if the client wants something that wasn’t included in the initial scope of work, you can easily work with them to gain additional budget to accommodate these requests.

Function Point’s agency management software includes briefing templates that help you make sure you always have the information you need to complete a project successfully, without wasting time on clarifications. This can boost your agency’s productivity as staff members will receive all the necessary information to guide them through a project and will be aware of their individual responsibilities. No more wasted time trying to seek clarification once a project has already started, or going down the wrong path only to have to start again.

Step 3: Standardize and automate workflows

By standardizing certain workflows, you can automate some of the more manual, repetitive tasks involved in projects, which can save your agency time and increase profit margins. Your employees can then focus on the important activities that need to be completed rather than spending time estimating and managing numerous jobs.

Function Point software includes the ability to automate most repeatable functions. For example, you can create template schedules and timelines for similar projects and adjust them to suit the specifics of the production. You can also develop work plans to turn into estimates, invoice all expenses with a click, and manage expenses more accurately. This level of automation can positively impact your agency’s productivity as employees are not stuck carrying out mundane, low-value activities and can contribute more meaningfully to the agency’s core activities.

Learn more about how you can improve productivity in your media production agency by booking a free demo with Function Point.