Agency Processes: Your Agency’s Guide to Success

How do you optimize your agency processes?

 Project managers and agency owners deal with the challenges of agency operations daily, such as supporting collaboration, ensuring that projects meet their milestones, and monitoring financials.

Agency processes go even further than that — they involve many departments and professionals, so they must be as efficient as possible. This guide discusses essential agency processes and how to improve them across all agencies.

Keep reading to find the best strategies for efficient workflows.

Key Takeaways

Agency processes are concerned with everything that makes your business function. We can describe them as the systematic and strategic steps that help agencies deliver services, operate efficiently, and achieve their goals.

These processes can vary significantly from one business to another, but some are shared, such as client management and human resources management. Project-specific processes usually differ depending on your agency — a creative process in a digital marketing agency and a design agency can look quite different.

These two terms can be used interchangeably, but there’s a slight difference between them. Processes can be seen as the “what” of your agency: which activities need to be performed to drive agency management. Workflows usually define the specific sequence to complete a certain goal or the “how” of your agency. Together, they ensure smooth agency operations.

Workflows consist of workstreams, usually defined as a specific set of activities or tasks within a larger initiative (check out our guide to workstreams in project management to learn more).

According to the 2023 Agency Insights Report, some of the main strategic challenges identified by agencies include:

Focusing on your processes helps you address all of the above. The aim is to ensure that your repetitive processes are as streamlined and efficient as possible so that your sales teams, core teams, and others, can focus on high-level tasks.

Good processes can help you eliminate silos and improve communication, increase employee work-life satisfaction, improve project performance and client retention, and more.

The entire process of optimizing a specific workflow includes:

Before you can start improving your processes, you need to fully understand your current procedures. The first step is to consider a single workflow from start to finish. For example, let’s take the process of creating and publishing a blog post, a typical marketing project management workflow.

We’ve now reached another essential concern. How do you define your key performance metrics? These can vary significantly depending on the process that you’re analyzing. For example, if you’re looking to improve your collaboration and team workloads, you could consider business capacity planning metrics such as:

Keep in mind that some metrics of success can be intangible. For example, a new process that doesn’t necessarily improve financial metrics but increases employee satisfaction can still be considered a good outcome.

Process documentation can be a pain point for many agencies. Research shows that 97% of organizations have minimal or no digital documentation processes, and 72% still use a mix of paper-based and digital processes (Forrester).

Digital documentation has many benefits, such as real-time collaboration, easier file sharing, etc. You can also create content faster, especially by utilizing the latest technology. For example, Productive AI can help you manage your Docs by rephrasing complex terms, changing your tone of voice, summarizing text, and much more.

For starters, what should you put in your process documentation? Here are some suggestions:

Another important thing to ensure is that the document’s location is clear to all relevant parties, as research states that 83% of employees will recreate documents if they can’t find them (M-Files). You don’t want people doing the same thing twice, and having duplicate documents creates additional issues when it comes to updating and syncing information.

A great way to manage your agency documentation is to use an all-in-one software for agency management. This helps keep all essential workflows on one platform.

Productive offers project and task management, budgeting, and resource planning and a way to manage your files with Docs.

Now, let’s examine core agency processes. They include:

Client relationship management (CRM) includes strategies and practices used by agencies to handle communications with current and potential clients.

When it comes to acquiring new clients, some important steps of the process include targeted marketing efforts, personalized outreach, and client pitching. Another important factor is working on cultivating your brand image by engaging industry professionals and focusing on positive client interactions.

Source: The 2023 Global Data Report on Agency Valuations

Ensuring good relationships with existing clients isn’t important just for positive word of mouth. According to Promethean Research, digital agencies that use retainers (80% do) tend to have more stable growth rates regardless of the overall economic circumstances. For repeat business, it’s important to maintain transparent communication for project progress and financials.

A practical example of how you could support transparency and client communication would be to invest in an agency project management system. Some types of software, such as Productive, can help you visualize and forecast your project finances and share this information with clients.

Additionally, Productive offers an integrated CRM for agencies to streamline client prospect management.

Some crucial steps of project management include:

There are various ways to organize your projects and tasks. Nowadays, Agile methodologies are most commonly used, especially for dynamic projects and cross-team collaboration. However, there are others, such as Waterfall, a traditional and sequential approach, and Scrum and Kanban, two popular subsets of agile.

When it comes to visualizing project timelines, collaboration tools have various ways of simplifying the creative process and project management for creatives.

For example, in Productive, you can visualize your progress with various layouts, including List, Calendar, Gantt, and Kanban.

You can assign custom statuses to your projects, set deadlines and estimations, and comment on each task. With automatic notifications, it’s easier to ensure that everyone is aware of the latest task updates.

Clients can also join your project boards, view, create, and leave feedback on tasks, depending on their access rights.

Another essential aspect is resource planning, which ensures tasks are appropriately delegated, and resources are used efficiently. It usually includes creating a comprehensive plan that includes resource allocation across the project timeline, with time off days and working hours by days.

Find out more by reading our article on creating the best capacity planning template for optimized resourcing.

When it comes to talent management, agency operations professionals need to think about three key points:

Strategies for attracting the right profile of employees are usually related to what your business is offering. If you ensure you’re providing competitive compensation and benefits, you’ll be well-positioned to get high-quality talent. Another important thing is outreach: invest in various digital or in-person promotional opportunities to reach out to industry talent.

Initiatives to develop your talent are important for succession planning or ensuring that key positions within the organization can be filled with skilled employees as current leaders retire or move on. Having a capacity building plan is also important for employee engagement, as it offers a clear path for growth and advancement, contributing to higher retention rates and organizational resilience.

According to a report by the Work Institute, some of the most frequent factors of voluntary turnover include lack of growth opportunities, poor work-life balance, bad workplace communication, and limited training and resources. By addressing these issues, companies can create a more satisfying environment that encourages employees to stay and grow with the entire team.

Finally, financial management and planning for agencies involves a variety of processes, such as:

Financial management and accounting tools will be your best option for effective workflows. Taking Productive’s Budgeting capabilities as an example, you can use the platform to:

Read the full story: Joi Polloi’s Teammates Have More Autonomy Since Using Productive

Now that we’ve explored the main types of agency workflows, let’s conclude with best practices for addressing potential challenges that may occur while implementing new processes.

Some optimization initiatives can have a very quick return on investment, such as automating a spreadsheet by implementing a tool with real-time reporting. Others, such as employee training programs or branding initiatives, can take a long time to have tangible results. It’s important to remember that not everything can be a quick win. Additionally, some process optimization may impact your agency in subtle ways — for example, by increasing employee satisfaction and decreasing turnover.

Resistance to change is one of the main obstacles to agency growth. It might stem from a lack of understanding, perceived loss of control, or simple fear of change. Overcoming this resistance first involves getting everyone on the management level to buy into the process change. Then, communicating changes clearly and educating all affected team members ensures that everyone understands the benefits of the new procedure and provide their insights.

The right tools can transform your agency’s processes. The main challenge is finding the right software for your business needs and ensuring that you’re getting the most out of the tool. For successful process optimization, consider using an all-in-one tool tailored specifically to agencies.

These types of solutions serve as a single source of truth for all core agency processes, such as financial management, resource planning, and project planning. Additionally, they can simplify collaboration, communication, and standardization by centralizing all information on a single platform.

To find out more about the benefits of comprehensive tools for agencies, book a demo with Productive today.