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Agency Processes: Your Agency’s Guide to Success Understanding Agency Processes The Benefits of Streamlined Agency Operations The Main Steps of Managing Operations Core Operations for Agencies Project Management and Execution Overview of Specialized Agency Processes 3 Tips for Optimizing Your Agency Processes 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, sothey 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 Well-organized agency processes help businesses address strategic challenges and manage daily workflows. The bring various benefits, such as improved communication, increased employee satisfaction, and business operational efficiency. The benefits of optimized efficiency include reduced operational expenses and increased profits, a more satisfied workforce, and increased sustainability and flexibility. The main operating strategies include setting goals and tracking key performance indicators, supporting collaboration and transparency, and utilizing PSA tools for automation, time management, and more. Understanding Agency Processes 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. Agency Processes vs Agency Workflows 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 largerinitiative (check out our guide to workstreams in project management to learn more). The Benefits of Streamlined Agency Operations According to the 2023 Agency Insights Report, some of the main strategic challenges identified by agencies include: Balancing new business development with existing client work (18%) Managing cash flow and finances (13%) Staying up to date with technologies and trends (12%) Establishing and maintaining strong client relationships (11%) Attracting and retaining top talent (8%) Focusing on your processes helps you address all of the above. The aim is to ensure that your repetitiveprocesses 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-lifesatisfaction, improve project performance and client retention, and more. The Main Steps of Managing Operations The entire process of optimizing a specific workflow includes: Evaluating current procedures Identifying areas of improvement Setting specific goals Monitoring key performance indicators Managing process documentation The Main Steps of Managing Operations 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. How long does it take to complete it: Consider how long it takes on average for a blog to go through its various completion phases — drafting, visual design, and publishing. Let’s say each step takes a couple of days usually. How frequent are disruptions: If this is your baseline, how often is each step delayed, and by how much time? Although tasks can vary from one to another in complexity, length, etc., significant and repeated variations from established timelines can signal areas for improvement. Which specific bottlenecks occur: Once you’ve identified the steps during which your process is lagging, you need to pinpoint why this happens. Is the person responsible for the content approval process too burdened with other tasks, or do the designers get unclear guidelines and have to spend too much time iterating? Is this process able to consistently achieve its objectives: Often, it’s difficult to recognize disruptions for what they are. If in doubt, go back to the process objectives. If the purpose of the blog post is to drive traffic to the website, the effectiveness can be measured by analyzing search engine performance and other key digital metrics. If they meet or exceed targets, the process can be considered effective. However, if your KPIs are always short of your goals, this means it’s time to consider the process. Setting Specific Goals and Establishing KPIs 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: Estimated vs. Completion Dates: This metric can reveal issues with unrealistic planning or inefficiencies. Analysis of previous projects can also help you optimize processes for future engagements. Billable Utilization: The utilization rate shows how effective your employees really are. You can also compare utilization between teams and individuals to guide strategic decisions, such as reskilling or hiring. Employee Retention: Low employee retention points to issues with your organizational principles, work culture, or project management. AN OPERATIONAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM LIKE PRODUCTIVE helps visualize and forecast key agency metrics Keep in mind that some metrics of success can be intangible. For example, a new process that doesn’t necessarilyimprove financial metrics but increases employee satisfaction can still be considered a good outcome. Optimizing the Documentation Process 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). Productive’s Docs are a single source of truth for centralized data Digital documentation has many