“Punch in, punch out, Maverick.”
I spend much of my work life speaking with the managers and principals of advertising and creative services firms. Each agency faces unique workflow challenges, but one of the most common ones cited is the sporadic submission of employee time sheets. An agency’s inventory is the amount of time employees spend on projects — it’s the product you’re selling. The importance of accurate time reporting cannot be overstated; your agency’s health depends on it. Having reliable data on the number of hours put into a project can not only be the difference between a profitable agency and one that’s losing money, but it’ll also offer a principal other key insights including informing staffing decisions and the ability to more accurately estimate new projects.
The next question is, of course, how to get your employees to faithfully record and submit their hours? I recently heard someone say, “You shouldn’t point out a problem unless you’ve prepared a solution.” — an adage I’m going to try to live by — so I have a solution. It starts with education. Your employees should know the importance of recording billable time. We’re all in this together and everyone wants to keep the lights on in the agency. Set the right expectations and put a clear process in place. Prepare for contingencies and eliminate room for excuses.
At Developware, we’ve addressed this issue by implementing a feature in CurrentTrack® which helps agency principals enforce a time sheet policy. Users of CurrentTrack can be flagged as time sheet required. You can also set how long an employee has to enter their time. At the specified time, if a user has an overdue time sheet, CurrentTrack displays a pop-up notification letting them know they’re missing a time sheet. They’re then brought to the screen where they can easily complete it. The user isn’t permitted to continue using the system until their time sheet has been successfully completed and filed. This might be some tough love for the offenders, but your business depends on it!
Please share your time sheet policy and enforcement methods in the comments!
Communication on the Rocks
At Developware, we live and work in close proximity to Bourbon country — Kentucky. Bourbon whiskey can be consumed in many different ways. It’s the featured ingredient in Mint Juleps, the official drink of a popular horserace which takes place just minutes from our offices; you’ve probably heard of it. I prefer to order my Bourbon “brown and big” like Mr. Draper. It’s better neat in cooler months and over ice (whiskey stones!) in spring and summer. Bourbon distilling is a fine art. The process includes, in layman’s terms, separating the “good stuff,” the essence of the ingredients, from the “waste.”
Much like our venerated local spirit, ad agencies have to distill their communications. The challenge is for Account Executives (AE), when meeting with clients, to capture all the details of a new project or campaign then review and focus it for internal communication. It’s imperative to accurately filter extraneous information, summarize the details of the project or campaign and pass clear details on to the creative team.
Most agencies I speak with are using a Creative Brief or a Client Contact Report to record this data. The exact form that these documents take is malleable and should be customized to suit your agency’s particular business. An AE should concentrate on summarizing, with precision, details about the project’s main message, target audience, talking points, budget, time constraints (let’s be exact here, not “ASAP”), and media type. The more detail the better. Opaque communication will lead to costly revisions, delayed deliverables and a strained client relationship. With so many challenges facing the modern agency, they simply don’t have the margins to cover inefficiency.
I implore you to examine the communications processes in your agency. How effective is it now? Do you have a process in place for capturing the details of client interactions? In CurrentTrack, we have a default Client Contact Report form which can be completed on-the-fly during a client meeting, on a laptop or iPad. Once completed, the form will be back at the office before the AE has even returned.
Whatever your methods, be sure to provide your team with the best information and be confident they’ll yield great results.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s have a bourbon, you’ve earned it.
The Importance of a Traffic System
The goal of any Traffic Department, whether within an advertising agency, design firm or public relations organization, is to increase efficiency and profitability. This can only be accomplished through the reduction and ultimate elimination of false starts, inappropriate job initiation, incomplete information sharing, over- and under-cost estimation, and the need for deadline extensions.
The core competency of advertising agencies (and other creative outlets) is not simply the production of creative work. It’s the efficient management of that production. Without traffic management — the ability to carefully control and document workflow processes — even the most creatively successful agency might find itself in a state of chaos. You have to meet deadlines. You have to stay within budgets. You have to know who’s doing what and when they’re doing it. And, most importantly, you have to have the tools to help you do so.
There are many project management options available on the market today. An entirely web-based system such as CurrentTrack® allows your Traffic Manager to break work down into measurable increments and manageable tasks, making that information accessible to everyone within your agency whether working in- or outside of the office. A central traffic system such as this fosters a way of doing business that is much more organized than a paper system. It also makes everyone involved in the process more accountable.
As the facilitator of a workflow system, the Traffic Manager ensures the consistent delivery of accurate work on time and within budget parameters. This is accomplished through not only the initiation of project work electronically, via a document such as a client contact report, but through the constant policing of deadlines and financials using such tools as task lists, time sheets and estimates. The Traffic Manager also ensures that work is accurate through the provision of detailed job requirement information to the appropriate parties via change orders, progress reports and media details. The careful daily monitoring of all jobs through the various integrated agency disciplines from their inception to their completion is the ultimate responsibility of the Traffic Manager.
A central traffic system, overseen by an employee whose sole responsibility is its ongoing maintenance, can save your agency valuable time. By making client information that was once segregated available to all employees, from the convenience of their desktops, it makes possible increased billable time through increased productivity. Task, time and expense management, client access to materials posted to the Internet, and the archiving and instant retrieval of job-specific information, are among the many indispensable features of a good web-based traffic system.
Every employee within an agency plays an integral role in its workflow processes. Through the combination of an efficient web-based traffic system, managerial commitment and team member dedication, your organization can experience unparalleled efficiency and profitability.
Feelin’ the love
Have you given your Traffic Manager a hug today? Perhaps you should. Without an effective traffic management infrastructure in place — both systems and personnel — how would projects make it through your agency? Balancing the opposing needs and desires between agency departments is a delicate, but necessary, task. Traffic managers are the fulcrum of the agency. In the modern agency world of shrinking media margins and outsourcing the last thing we can afford is inefficiency. Planning traffic appropriately has never been more important.
Dear Creatives, please don’t view our beloved Traffic Managers as merciless taskmasters, they’re just trying to make sure the agency’s work gets done within a reasonable time frame, stays on budget and is routed to the appropriate team member. It’s tough work, help us out!