A common factor in almost all creative agencies is the diversity of work, projects, and actions carried out daily for the different clients served by each one of them. It is very normal to meet professionals in the area who can report different experiences within the same company, sometimes even within the same working day: the creation of layouts, planning of campaigns, releases, brainstorms, media activation, relationship with influencers, production of content or events, in short, there is an infinity of possibilities and areas of activity for creative agencies – and this implies a diverse, multidisciplinary team with different levels and workloads, in addition to a wide range of suppliers, partners and, of course, several projects happening simultaneously, which can demand a complex organization that can be solved with Nutcache.
Thinking about this intense, dynamic workload and with demands that are almost always different from each other, we decided to show three day-to-day obstacles that can be easily managed and simplified in the workflow with Nutcache. Our software allows a simple, complete, and fully trackable project management at every step of the process so that your business flows naturally, in a coordinated way, and free from negative surprises. We talked to some professionals in the field and researched their pain to contextualize this article in the routine of creative agencies, and now it’s time to share this work.
Let’s get to know some of the most common problems of creative agencies that can be solved with Nutcache
Problem 1: Coordinate large teams with professionals of different levels, contract types, and workloads.
Account executives, creation, media, production, advisory, digital, planning, writing: creative agencies can have different scopes, but something very common for many of them is the diversity of areas in the same business. This is because this type of company serves very different customers, with complex and constantly changing demands, and we must prepare teams for day-to-day challenges. In addition, there are different professional hierarchies and levels – seniors, juniors, interns, directors, and even freelance service providers – and each contract type will have its own workload. You can already see the complexity of organizing these teams, right? The good news is that it can easily be solved with Nutcache.
Renata Melo, Creative Director, pointed out that one of the demands that take up the most time in her day is organizing the agenda and allocating employees to carry out projects. She also mention that some simpler project management software are not always enough to make the day-to-day simpler, even more so in its free versions: “I have a staff that is exclusive to certain clients and others that I can allocate to any project I want, and to be able to count on intelligent software to automate this process is essential to make my day more productive”.
With Nutcache, team organization is done naturally and intuitively. The professional who will manage the projects can create individual profiles for each employee, restrict which clients or projects he can work on, in addition to defining the workload and the value of this workload so that there is accurate monitoring of the time that is being spent versus what is being charged at the end of deliveries. After this initial organization, when it’s time to get down to business, managers can control the entries and exits of professionals from a given project, assign tasks to each person responsible, stipulate deadlines, and control the entire workflow, considering the different contract levels and types. Your hired team can, for example, share the same project with freelancers, and we can define the execution order with the dependencies tool – which stipulates when a task can only start after another is finished.
Not to mention the ease of communication using the software, like the comments section inside tasks, and also the possibility of concentrating all the material needed by the team within Nutcache’s tools like attachments, description fields, start and end dates with status and custom tags to make the entire flow even more organized. Easy, isn’t it? Let’s move on to another productivity-focused feature.
Problem 2: Organize customers and suppliers of different categories in one place to facilitate the work routine.
Due to the diversity of projects and demands that a creative agency executes in the work routine, another very common point for companies in this category is a considerable volume of different clients and also of suppliers so that the project and all its stages are carried out from the beginning to the end within the agency itself. This implies one more need to organize the clients portfolio and also the various suppliers.
Firstly, clients belong to different segments with specific requests, which demand several areas of the agency to solve them. Imagine that the same project starts by the contact from the client to account executives, which becomes an internal demand, then creative, media or production managers, for example, organize the team responsible for meeting that demand. From there, the team needs all the important and historical information to be available so that a new employee or someone who has never served that customer can be contextualized in the universe, and so on, and this is just one possible scenario.
Next to the clients, we have the list of suppliers that provide services for the business, because not every agency, for example, has all of its activities in-house. Printing services, capturing images and photographs, sound production, organizing events, influencers, and documentation are some of the services commonly outsourced by these businesses, and keeping this list in an easily accessible place so that all employees responsible for hiring can articulate the internal team with external suppliers. Sounds complex? We know so, but all this organization can be solved with Nutcache!
Once you have access to our software, customers can be configured in your organization settings, with institutional information and even advanced billing settings such as currency used and default tax as well as payment terms. The more detailed this configuration, the easier it will be to handle demands and charges at the end of each project. We can group suppliers and their important information in Nutcache’s expenses area – the same area in which managers monitor, approve or disapprove costs generated in the execution of projects for each client.
By keeping this information always up to date and organized, the day-to-day of those responsible for the project will become much easier. Jacqueline França, Head of Digital reinforces that this organization is the key so that, in the eye of the hurricane of day-to-day demands, all information is concentrated and ready to be accessed at any time. As the person responsible for contacting different suppliers such as corporate gift manufacturers, media kits, and also influencers who carry out work for the different clients of the agency, Jacqueline affirms: “having a software that allows me to have all the important information from both clients and suppliers in the palm, in an organized and customizable way, saves time and makes my work routine more productive – I spend less time trying to gather information and more time executing the demand creatively, which is ideal for my vision as a professional and, consequently for agency deliveries.” Another demand that can be solved with Nutcache!
Problem 3: Manage several projects and tasks distributed among professionals from different areas.
Taking a closer look at the day-to-day work of the agencies, we are faced with a high volume of projects and deliveries for different clients. Some of them are fixed demands that occur frequently, others are punctual, and they can also involve a fixed or flexible team. All this requires a strategic organization of teams and delivery stages so that all points are executed correctly, in the necessary order, and properly aligned with the demand made by the client to the account executives.
Some professionals, such as Lerynda Lima, a sales excellence analyst, play critical roles in the process’s strategic organization and task division. In an ideal flow, she is one of the people who follows the process from start to finish, from brainstorming to task division, execution follow-up, review of the final deliverable, and even client presentation. When we visualize this path, we can see that several projects are happening at the same time. It is very easy to get lost during the execution if you do not have a powerful tool to help you manage the projects.
She pointed out that her entire day is simplified by the automation and digitization of processes so that she can dedicate less time to operational tasks and more time to strategic and creative planning: “As my routine demands that I follow deliveries from beginning to end to ensure that the entire execution is in line with the client’s demand, visualizing a project quickly and intuitively with the help of a management tool is essential – I can enter a project, visualize the team involved, who is responsible for each task in the process, the status, the time spent and also to monitor what is being created, which can be a campaign, an action or an institutional presentation, for example. In addition, I need a tool that allows me to change deadlines, make exchanges between the responsible professionals, and attach important materials for the execution of the project.”
Do you know which tool incorporates all of these features? That’s right, another set of potential problems that are solved with Nutcache! With our software, your project management is complete, with the organization of teams properly distributed among the tasks of a project, with delivery deadlines and dependencies to ensure that all steps are fulfilled, in addition to the definition of priorities, tags, and various integrations with PayPal, GitHub, Slack, and Zappier, for example.
Conclusion
Were you able to identify points similar to the problems presented in this article within your work routine? Then it’s time to get to know Nutcache and all the tools our software can offer your creative agency. Team management, project, and task execution, and customer and supplier organization are just a few of the functions designed especially for businesses that focus on work productivity – plus you can enjoy complete time and expense tracking, an integrated billing system synchronized to your projects, in addition to real-time budgeting so that you are always monitoring the profitability of your customers’ demands. Your routine is completely simplified and common issues can be solved with Nutcache!
Access our subscription page right now and find the one that best suits your company, and share this article with professionals in the area to make everyone’s lives even simpler and more productive.
