Agency Project management software for agencies
In an agency, a fixed price is rarely lost all at once. It is lost through small requests that nobody refuses, through a third round of changes that nobody had planned, and through revisions that seem too minor to justify a discussion. Project management software for an agency therefore has to count what the relationship does not.
What breaks in an agency.
Four situations specific to the trade, with one thing in common: each is too small to be dealt with.
The third round of changes
Two validation rounds were planned. The third, then the fourth, are refused by nobody: they are produced, and they are not invoiced.
The request made in a meeting
“It would be nice to add…” Nobody writes it down, everyone remembers it differently, and it gets delivered.
The approver who changes
The marketing director decides at the first round, the general management at the third, with a different opinion. The rework was not in the quote.
Creative subcontracting
A motion designer, a photographer, an external developer. Their delay pushes back the delivery without anything making it visible to the client, who naturally blames the agency.
Why the tools on the market are not enough here.
Task tools and creative review tools do their job very well: organizing production, commenting on a mock-up, tracking a version. Many agencies are, in fact, very well equipped with them.
One particularity of the trade needs adding: in an agency, the relationship often takes precedence over the contract, and refusing a small request costs more, in the moment, than producing it. This calculation is rational case by case, and ruinous when added up over six months. The question is therefore not learning to say no, but making visible what saying yes costs, at the moment it is given.
What these tools do not do is tie a comment to a sold scope. An annotation on a mock-up is treated as a correction; it may nonetheless be a new request, and nothing tells the two apart. At the end of the project, the number of revisions is known, their cost never.
The shift is to turn every request into a dated record at the moment it is made, set against what was sold. This is what we call operational commitment management.
In pylotik.
Three points that answer the situations above.
Validation rounds are counted
The planned number is a commitment like any other. The extra round is visible, and it is discussed before being produced.
Every request leaves a dated record
Including those made in meetings. The amendment then starts from an observation rather than a disagreement of memory.
The approver is named
An activity has only one approver, on the client side too. See the RACI matrix.
The formal approval of minutes is covered in client approval of minutes, and the gap between time spent and time sold in fixed-price project tracking. The full tour is on the product page, the contract modes on the commitment levels.
What we are asked in agencies.
Do you replace our creative review tool?
No. Annotating a mock-up, versioning a visual and graphic review stay with your tools. We carry what they do not: the link between a request and the sold scope.
How do I invoice an extra round of changes without upsetting the client?
By flagging it before producing it, on the basis of an agreed number of rounds. The conversation is easy when it is about a written commitment, and painful when it arrives with the invoice.
What about requests made in meetings?
They become dated lines, with a named requester. This is not bureaucracy, and it does not require formalizing every exchange: it is what lets you say, three months later, what was asked, by whom, and whether it was in the quote.
How do I track our external providers?
In the same system, the other way around: you are their client. Their delay becomes a dated line instead of being absorbed by your schedule, and access is open to them free of charge, as it is to your own clients.