Snapshot of Challenges and Solutions

Client Profile:

The client is a large, in-house agency of an International Hospitality organization with over 400 users. 

Challenges: 

The client was looking to overcome three major challenges:

• -They wanted to make their general workflow more efficient. They were using manual processes for project scheduling and stood to benefit from automation.
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• -Their internal billing system was a “homegrown” solution that was outdated. Their disconnected billing system made tracking budgets, forecasting and getting any real-time data tedious and inefficient. 
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• -Since only a select group of managers and other team members had access to certain data at any given time, reporting was a cumbersome process. All reporting requests were funneled through a few team members, Making Ad hoc reports especially difficult to produce in a timely manner. 

Advantage Solutions:

Advantage helped the client:

• -Automate their workflow and utilize more flexible and efficient project schedules and other project management tools
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• -Implement an integrated billing tool and make project and billing data accessible to every team member with dashboards automatically providing real-time project status information based on data from integrated project management and financial tools 
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• -Simplify and universalize the reporting process by creating templated standard reports and giving access to a customizable report builder for ad hoc reporting

Outcome:

With Advantage agency management software, the client noted substantial gains in workflow efficiency across teams. With accurate, current and self-service reporting, their in-house team had better visibility, which gave team members a sense of empowerment and boosted job satisfaction.

The Team’s Story

As an international hotel chain with an in-house agency, the client had a complicated workflow. Without an agency management software to automate certain processes, project schedules would often be slowed by otherwise avoidable issues. Like many agencies or large creative teams, they were looking for a way to make their workflow more efficient.  

A larger issue still, internal billing was carried out with a “homegrown” solution that made tracking extremely difficult. Invoices would be created and sent to different departments, but those departments had no easy way to track their budgets in real-time or forecast for the future.  

And reporting was a nightmare of a process. Only a handful of operational department members had access to essential data needed for reports.. This meant that every reporting request had to be funneled through operations, whether it was a standard report or an ad hoc report needed for a specific meeting. This tedious and time-consuming process blunted the efficiency of each department.

How Advantage Helped

The magic started for the hotel chain’s in-house agency during the discovery and implementation process. The Advantage implementation team took the time to fully understand the client’s goals and documented the team’s existing structure and workflow. Using this as a baseline, the Advantage team were able to leverage software features and streamline their workflow with greater automation and efficiency. The client’s project schedules were now fully integrated with every other element of agency operation, including time-tracking and budgeting. Communication, now centralized, was easier, and project scheduling tools offered more flexibility and customization. 

Regarding the in-house agency’s billing issues: Advantage Software simplified every process that had previously caused so much pain. Internal budget and financial tracking challenges were solved with fully-integrated billing, budgeting and forecasting tools. 

With these tools at their disposal, team members were empowered to find real-time answers to questions about any given project. When someone asked about project status or how much was left in their budget, team members could look at the Advantage Dashboard for instant answers. No more going through a handful of team members for data that might’ve been outdated by the time it got back to them. Information on details like who worked on a certain project, how many hours had gone into a project or what magazine an ad had run in was now just a few clicks away for everyone in the agency.

What’s more, the Advantage consultants worked closely with the client’s team to identify key reporting criteria and helped them build templates for standard monthly, quarterly and annual reporting. The Advantage personnel also trained the team to use the Advantage self-service dynamic reporting tool to create on-demand custom reports anytime.

“After talking through our needs,” said the Operations Director for the agency, “the Advantage consultant spent many hours with the team, showing them how to create their own reports… they felt empowered because they didn’t have to rely on Operations for ad-hoc reporting requests.”

With Advantage, everyone in the agency could run ad hoc reports on-demand. Access to presentable, up-to-date and accurate reports made meeting prep much easier and less time-intensive. 

Advantage’s experienced personnel supported the in-house agency from start to finish, working collaboratively with agency team members through every step of the implementation process, from discovery to design to testing and through system launch. 

By implementing fully integrated project management, budgeting, billing and forecasting tools,  Advantage helped the in-house team make workflows more efficient, project and billing data easily accessible to everyone.As a result, reporting became faster and more reliable.

If Advantage could maximize efficiencies for the in-house agency of a massive global hotel chain, how much could we do to help your team thrive? 

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The Advantage agency management system is an all-in-one solution purpose-built for agencies and creative teams of all sizes.

We’ve been exclusively focused on helping our clients maximize productivity, efficiency and profitability for over 40 years, with almost a thousand agencies counting on us to help run their business every day.

With Advantage you get a team of US-based agency veterans supporting you every step of the way.  All implementation and training is done by experienced Advantage staff, and all clients have unlimited access to our live customer support line from 8am-7:30pm Eastern every business day.

Find out how Advantage can help you by contacting us for a complimentary demo or discussion about your unique needs.