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!

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.

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!

It’s not a surprise to anyone that a sexy homepage creates curb appeal for your company. One CurrentTrack® client recently landed a national account because “[they] liked [our] website.” If we all know how critical it is to your business, then my question is: why do some (a lot) of ad agencies, who are trying to help clients promote their goods and services, have confusing (even irritating) websites? I have a couple guesses as to why agency sites go out of control, but that’s not what this article is about.

Here are my top 5 web-peeves (sorry):

1.) Intro – If you give us a flash intro and include [Skip Intro] at the bottom of the page, everyone’s going to skip your introduction. If it’s not important, and can be skipped, should it even be on your site let alone the first thing visitors see?

2.) Flash – It simply doesn’t run well on computers and isn’t built for the mobile web. Apple® sold 15 million iPads over the 2011 Holiday season and I assure you not a single one of those users will be able to visit your site if it’s built in Flash. Avoid this technology.

3.) Music – Midi versions of elevator music are decidedly unhip. I provide my own music when browsing the web, you should suspect that many people do the same and avoid jarring them.

4.) Spelling and Grammar – Maybe working with a grammarian proofreader has turned me into a stickler but really, proofread your site’s content; then proofread it again.

5.) Updates – Old blog posts are sad, irrelevant and leave visitors searching for a pulse. If you’re not going to regularly update content, don’t post a blog or space for updates to go stale.

Incidentally, the Second Wind Network has put together a handy new website guide.

Agree? Disagree? Email me or comment below!

We are deeply saddened by the loss of our generational genius Steve Jobs of Apple. His contributions to the computer industry are beyond measure. Apple products, imbued with his spirit, impact our lives at work and at home in amazing ways. The gifts of his vision remain with us but the world will sorely miss this remarkable man.

Executing this concept is tough. On the one hand if a system lacks table stakes functionality the marketplace will pass on a product when they complete their feature comparison grid. On the other hand if too much is added, you might earn those check marks at the expense of usability; a cluttered, difficult-to-learn system will slow adoption and end users will hate the product. Finding the right mix is like getting the water temperature just right.

Other industries have experienced this as well. Remember when fast food chains seemed to offer an ever growing menu of options to the bewilderment of their customers? Go to Jack in the Box and you can purchase egg rolls alongside your french fries and tacos. Besides confusing the customer about what exactly defines Jack in the Box as a brand, none of the food was executed very well.  Then along came Chipotle with it’s minimal menu of just a few interchangeable ingredients. It not only enhanced their brand but it also let them focus on their core competency: delivering consistently fresh tasting food at fast food prices. They accomplished this by keeping their menu and list of ingredients “lean.”

When looking for a solution (agency management or otherwise), before getting hung up on feature comparisons, consider thinking about which system will complement and enhance your existing workflow while not disrupting your employees’ day. Select the solution that addresses your explicit needs most efficiently and cuts the clutter. While a taco with fries can be tasty, sometimes all you’re looking for is a burrito.

At Developware, we often tout CurrentTrack’s universal accessibility through an array of browsers and devices as a significant benefit. Our clients tend to agree!  Access to information about your business when you need it most is one of the marquee promises of cloud based software services and we’re proud we chose to develop in this direction a decade ago.

We’re in good company too. Google has experienced tremendous success with their cloud-based office suite and in what is perhaps a more significant move, Microsoft just introduced Office 365, a web-based version of their bread and butter Office package. This is a move in the right direction but there are still applications that haven’t made their way to the web just yet. I’m talking about the myriad creative tools we use to create great work for clients.

While InDesign and Photoshop are terrific tools, it’s still up to us to figure out a way to store and share the files we create.  One solution a number of our clients have mentioned is Dropbox.  Dropbox, if you’re not already familiar with it, is an app that resides on your computer as a folder. Simply place your project files into the designated ‘Dropbox’ folder and your data is backed up to the cloud while you continue on with your day. You also have the ability to share folders with your teammates so you can easily collaborate internally. It’s also a relative bargain compared to some of the pricey storage hardware solutions in the marketplace. Dropbox doesn’t solve all problems, however. You still need a method to share data with your clients and vendors which is where a solution like CurrentTrack’s Client / Vendor Portal shines.

CurrentTrack allows you to post your creative files, task lists and calendar events for review and comment by your clients. The data resides in the job folder in CurrentTrack, which makes this functionality a seamless part of your workflow. You can also use CurrentTrack to post completed work for vendors to access when ready; it’s an intuitive replacement to maintaining an FTP site.

Cloud services are reducing the headache of data management and with the right approach and solutions your agency can leverage cloud architecture to make information more open and accessible.

For more information about Dropbox visit www.dropbox.com.

Half of our staff is out today, literally. During the summer months, our managing partner blesses us with “partner days.” We’re each paired with another employee and, on every other Friday, one of us has the day off.  What an incredibly productive move on her part.  I mean that, sincerely.

When I’m in the office on a partner day, my productivity increases exponentially. I’m focused, able to accomplish the little things that get put aside during the week and, with just a few clicks, in the loop on all of my partner’s projects. I don’t have to rummage through paperwork or bother him on his day off. I have immediate access to his tasks, budgets, change orders, and even creative assets through CurrentTrack®. And, because it’s web-based (and he’s a workaholic), he can log on from his iPad® – poolside – and see what’s happening in his absence.

“Partner days.” Reason number 1,000,000,001 why I couldn’t live without our workflow system!