Project Management for Agencies

Marketing agencies are contracted to handle projects on behalf of their clients, and by nature, they often handle multiple different projects in parallel.

This means that project management should be the backbone of any marketing agency’s day-to-day operations.

In practice, agencies must leverage agency project management software to ensure proper execution of projects in three key areas:

• Facilitating clear communication between team members, vendors/contractors, and clients
• Accurate tracking of schedule/deadlines, progress, deliverables, and results
• Regular analysis of each project’s results to continuously improve workflows to be more optimized, address identified issues, and ensure the productivity of the agency to make sure it stays profitable.

In short, agencies manage clients’ projects to ensure they can achieve their objectives while staying within deadlines and budget.

Project management software for creative marketing and ad agencies is an online solution designed for project planning, resource allocation, scheduling, and change management.

In practice, agency project management software allows its users (i.e., project managers) to plan and track project components, projects stakeholders, and resources with these primary functions:

• Project planning:  defining a project schedule, mapping tasks and responsibilities, and describing task interactions
• Collaboration: facilitating communication and collaboration between stakeholders
• Document sharing: providing a central document repository for stakeholders
• Task management: creation and assignment of tasks, establishing deadlines, and tracking progress
• Calendar: real-time, automatically updated calendar to keep track of the schedule
• Time tracking: tracking time for all tasks and maintaining an audit trail

By using project management software for your creative and advertising agency, project managers can have a bird’s eye view of four key elements in real-time, which will help them in making important project-related decisions.

These four key elements are:

• Project scope: the project’s goals, requirements, and limitations (size.) The scope is ultimately about the alignment between the project’s goals and the budget allocated to reach these goals.
• Time management: time is a crucial factor in virtually any device. Each task must be prioritized, scheduled with a set duration, and allocated with the right resources.
• Resource management: each project has three key resources; people, equipment, and material. It’s crucial to make sure the right people are assigned to the right tasks while giving appropriate access to the required materials and equipment.
• Money management: estimating and managing the required financial expenses to achieve each task. It may also involve financial projections for the future.

Function Point is one of the best project management software for creative, design and advertising agencies at the moment. 

One of the key advantages of Function Point is its unique approach to time tracking that allows agencies to set up preferences regarding billability (utilization vs. realization of time.) 

Function Point can show billable timesheets that were previously written off (lower realization than utilization), which can help the agency not only in measuring accurate billable hours but also in accurately measuring the performances of different employees.

Last but not least, Function Point also allows agencies to get proof of their employees’ work without the over-the-shoulder management treatment, facilitating a sustainable employer-employee relationship to maximize engagement and productivity. 

Function Point agency project management software offers an all-in-one workflow management experience with a robust set of features, including:

• Resource and time management features:
  1. Time tracking
  2. Smart resource forecast by role 
  3. Forecast tentative projects
  4. Leave, vacation, and paid-time-off tracking
  5. Fully customizable work calendar
  6. Smart tracking of billable and non-billable hours
  7. Mobile/desktop app for time tracking
  8. Allocate to job/task
• Client management features:
  1. Customer briefs
  2. Sales pipeline and opportunity tracking
  3. Create estimates and proposals
  4. Seamless email integration to Outlook and Gmail
  5. Workback schedule estimates
  6. Change order and revision tracking
• Project management features:
  1. Retainer management
  2. Creative briefs
  3. Campaign and project hierarchy
  4. Schedule templates
  5. Gantt chart
  6. Task dependencies 
  7. Kanban board
• Financial management features:
  1. Campaign and project budgeting
  2. Task budgeting
  3. Expense tracking and markup
  4. Batch invoicing
  5. Blended/role/staff rates
• Business intelligence features:
  1. Customizable dashboards
  2. Profitability by client, project, and services
  3. Staff billable vs. utilization (efficiency analysis)
  4. Margin projection
  5. Project ROI
  6. Forecast reports
• Collaboration features:
  1. Client portal
  2. Proofing
  3. Request management
  4. Team communication

Function Point is not just another glorified time tracking and scheduling solution and offers a robust set of features to help you manage your internal and client projects in a comprehensive way.

Robust time-tracking features like the ability to configure billability (utilization vs. realization) so employers accurately differentiate between billable and non-billable hours.

Powerful and versatile expense tracking and cost-calculator features for a streamlined invoicing process.

View staff workload in real-time. Improved accountability would ultimately result in improved productivity. 

Comprehensive time tracking features for managing remote workers, like the ability to accurately track billable and non-billable hours. Excellent for managing remote team members.