The 5 Workflows Agencies Need to Up-Level Their Performance
Agencies are losing up to 58% of their workday to inefficiencies, according to Asana’s 2023 Work Global Index. Emails. Unncessary meetings. Coordinating project work. Digging through scattered docs.
The solution? Structured, collaborative workflows that boost productivity by 25% and speed up projects by 30%.
These workflows (that are well-designed and constantly improved upon), act as your agency's operating system. Essentially, by standardizing how work moves from ideation to delivery, agencies can reduce bottlenecks, improve project profitability, and deliver more consistent results for clients.
And as we’ve seen over the past couple years, client demands are growing more complex as timelines shrink, meaning that having the right workflows in place isn't just about efficiency, it's about survival.
But what are the right workflows? Let's explore the five workflows your agency needs right now to transform and up-level.
Workflow #1: New Deal Process for New and Existing Clients
Having a well-defined process and workflow for managing new deal contracts is essential for agencies to ensure efficiency, consistency, and clarity. This is especially true when multiple team members are involved in account management and sales.
To address this, it's crucial to establish clear thresholds that define who should be involved and at what stage of a new deal process. Using standardized tools, such as a discovery call-template and a lead qualification scorecard, can further streamline the workflow by ensuring that every opportunity is assessed consistently and objectively. This helps reduce confusion, leaves a better impression on potential clients, and helps deals close more effectively.
Workflow #2: Client Onboarding and Kickoff
A well-structured client onboarding and kickoff workflow is also crucial for creating a strong first impression and building trust in your agency's professionalism and capabilities. Since onboarding is often a client's initial interaction with your project team, it's important to leave them feeling confident and excited about the journey ahead.
Effective onboarding involves key steps such as introductions between client stakeholders and the project team, setting clear expectations about the project ahead, providing a thorough briefing, and establishing communication channels to ensure alignment from the start. Utilizing templates, such as an onboarding checklist for setting up necessary tools and a structured kickoff meeting agenda, can help keep this workflow consistent and efficient.
Workflow #3: Time Tracking and Invoicing
The third workflow that is vital for your agency is the one that manages your team's time tracking and invoicing. For time tracking, I'm not talking about micromanaging, either. Rather, this workflow is about gaining valuable insights into how efficiently projects are being executed and how accurately they are being scoped. Accurate time tracking provides the data needed to assess your team’s performance and improve processes, but it's important to focus on collecting information that is truly useful. If the data isn’t actionable, it’s not worth tracking.
I’ve seen first hand teams that start to implement time tracking and are shocked by their lack of efficiency on projects. The more efficient teams can be while delivering high value to clients, the higher the chance for client satisfaction and retention.
Equally critical is having a streamlined invoicing process in place to ensure no billable work is overlooked (and is paid in a timely manner), safeguarding the agency’s cash flow. Together, effective time-tracking and invoicing workflows help agencies optimize operations, maintain financial stability, and deliver consistent value to clients.
Workflow #4: Resourcing and Capacity Planning
Another critical workflow to implement is a structured workflow for resourcing team members and capacity planning, which helps optimize the balance between team workload, project efficiency, and business growth.
I know these two terms can sometimes be used interchangeably but here’s the distinction:
Resourcing refers to the appropriate allocation of a person onto a project to ensure the project’s goals are met, profitably. This is about the selection process of who gets assigned to incoming projects based on availability, skills, cost, previous relationship with other team members, etc.
Capacity planning, is a more future-focused view of the team’s overall capacity to handle the current workload, and any projected pipeline work (if target sales goals are met). Proper capacity planning ensures that your team doesn't become overloaded with the risk of burnout or become underutilized, missing opportunities to maximize their potential and revenue.
With clear workflows in place (and supplemented tools such as a simple spreadsheet for smaller agencies or a resourcing and capacity planning tool like Parallax if you're a larger one), you can effectively allocate the right resources to the right projects, and plan ahead for the future. Doing this helps ensure your team knows what they’re working on and can execute their craft most efficiently. This not only enhances project delivery but also helps provide more confidence in forecasted revenue, giving you better visibility into the financial trajectory of the business.
Workflow #5: Reporting on Financials and Performance Metrics
Finally, having a clear workflow for managing financials and performance metrics is essential for agencies to track progress, identify opportunities for improvement, and drive meaningful change. The saying "you can’t improve what you don’t measure" underscores the importance of streamlining how data is gathered and reported.
It may seem like this process would solely take place within the finance department, but establishing this workflow actually begins at the project level. Workflows should enable teams to provide insights into their performance against project budgets in real-time, which in turn helps inform the company's overall financial health.
This process involves ensuring that employees promptly and accurately record their progress (oftentimes in the form of hours logged toward a project, and project status updates), and project leaders monitor project “spend” and progress to make sure they align with the overarching budget, timeline, and scope. Weekly recurring meetings to review project financial health status can be crucial for keeping everyone on track.
“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.”
–Paul J. Meyer
Finance can then act as the owner of gathering and reporting key financial and performance metrics to those who need to be in the know.
Documenting New Processes: Final Advice
Like anything, implementing these new processes can at first be challenging. To implement new workflows more seamlessly, I encourage agency leaders to focus on creating a centralized hub for all documentation and only document your most important workflows. It may not seem that critical, but doing this ensures there is a single source of truth for the entire team.
For more insight and background on the importance of documentation, read "Streamlining Success: The Crucial Role of Documentation for Agencies."
When your agency has the right workflows in place, everything just runs smoother. There’s less chaos, fewer surprises, and way more wins. These five workflows aren’t just about keeping the lights on; they’re about setting your agency up to grow, stay profitable, and outshine the competition
