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Transitioning from Workamajig Classic to Platinum

December 4, 2017 by Jessica Stephens

Workamajig® has been making great strides in getting their new, HTML5-based Platinum version up and running for Time Entry, Project Management, Expense Reports, Purchase Orders, Billing and Sales/CRM (some of the Accounting functionalities are still being beta tested). We know that lots of people are excited to make the transition from Workamajig Classic to Platinum, but we also know that you won’t just wake up one morning and start using Platinum, so we created a checklist to help you make the transition as smooth and successful as possible!

First of all, we highly recommend using this transition as an opportunity to audit your current agency processes and implement the industry best practices you’ve always considered. We know there are probably 900 reasons you haven’t implemented these yet, but, since you’re already going to be making changes, why not use this momentum to better your agency?!

Here are a few CPI Best Practices you can implement with this transition:

  • Create a Rate-Based Estimating vs. Value-Based Pricing culture
  • Document and implement a Principal/Executive Investment policy for scoping
  • Define your agency’s workflows + translate into appropriate phased-based project architectures
  • Create a culture of daily, accurate time entry across organization
  • Institute Billing + Revenue Recognition meetings as a method of monthly accountability
  • Utilize transactions to drive General Ledger data for more accurate financials + increased reporting insight
  • Implement a dedicated, proactive Project Management discipline

(If you haven’t yet, we’ve got a series of White Papers dealing with the Top 10 Broken Agency Processes and the Project Management discipline that you should read to learn more about each of these best practices.)

As you prepare to make the transition to Platinum, these are the steps we recommend taking in order to be more successful.

  1. Create a Platinum rollout schedule.
    • Analyze level of effort to get you through the items in this checklist and dedicate a cross-functional team to making it happen. Have a Project Manager create a realistic schedule and set a final date for a Time Entry and PM relaunch in Platinum. Your PM Rock Stars and early adopters can start working in Platinum with your current processes, however your relaunch date needs to be your drop-dead, burn the ships, there’s no turning back date for everyone else! 😉
  2. Recognize that not all workflows are the same; determine how many different workflows your agency truly has, e.g. AOR vs. Campaign-based vs. one-off Projects.
    • Pull together an integrated, cross-agency team to define these workflows, including the critical checks and balances as well as integration points that make you successful as an agency. Create a visual language to document these workflows and rollout agency-wide.
  3. Determine if your agency has the right organizational structure to get the most value from Workamajig Platinum’s robust project management functionality.
    • Agencies with a proactive Project Management discipline can gain significantly more out of WMJ’s PM functionalities than those with project management split across many departments.
  4. Translate your updated agency workflows into new Campaign Architecture and subsequent Project Architectures.
    • When defining these new architectures, ensure the checks and balances, as well as all integration points, are properly documented within your phase-based Project Architectures. Don’t forget to identify milestones so you can easily determine hard and soft dates for more effective schedule management.
  5. Track Principal/Executive Investment instead of scoping into a budget.
    • When a value-based price is lower than your rate-based estimate, use a Project Custom Field to track the approved Principal/Executive Investment. Create and approve your Project Estimate at the rate-based amount and write off PI evenly over the course of the project to clearly track the planned investment being made.
  6. Create new templates based on newly defined Project Architectures.
    • Now that you have your beautiful workflow-based Project Architectures, turn these into your new Workamajig templates; don’t forget to include durations and predecessors to make future project setup a breeze!
    • NOTE: Any templates you created in Classic will automatically carry over to Platinum and be available for project creation BUT new templates you create in Platinum will NOT be available for project creation in Classic. Use this as a way to encourage PMs to use Platinum. 🙂
  7. Ensure all templates have low + high Task and Service Estimates.
    • Now that your new templates are built, you should create low and high level of effort estimates by Task and Service within each template. This will save you time when creating new projects as you won’t have to estimate each one from scratch, but you’ll still be able to customize the estimate as needed; additionally, your customized estimate can then be easily auto-allocated to services and employees once the team is determined.
  8. Create new non-billable Agency Admin projects and services to differentiate between different types of non-billable time.
    • Remember, not all non-billable time is created equal! To effectively manage agency utilization, it’s critical to know where non-billable time is going, e.g. Training/Shadowing, Gen/Admin, Management, etc. As we all know, this time can get out of hand and it’s great to be able to easily identify what could be dragging down utilizations.
  9. Clean up + close any old/inactive Projects and Campaigns.
    • We know how messy Workamajig can get over time. Reduce the clutter in Platinum; this is a great opportunity to clean things up, manage transactions and close old Projects and Campaigns.
  10. Customize Budget Columns by Security Group.
    • Within Platinum, you now have the ability to predefine and set Budget Column views for the entire agency or by Security Group; this allows you to determine the best practice columns each team member should be looking at to most effectively manage Project Budgets and eliminate confusion.
  11. Train your Project Management team on new Platinum UI and additional functionalities.
    • Don’t just push your Project Managers into Platinum; most PMs don’t love change! 🙂 Take the time to train on the new UI and additional key features, including the Today-PM dashboard, to increase PM adoption rates. Consider attending CPI’s Workamajig Platinum Project Management University to discover everything a PM needs to know about industry best practices and Workamajig Platinum!
  12. Train your team on the new Platinum time entry.
    • This is the time to reset expectations for both daily and accurate time tracking. We’ll never get better as an agency if we don’t know what actually happened on a project. Show your team the benefit of using the Platinum weekly grid to easily log time but still be able to submit timesheets daily.
  13. Analyze Billing Worksheet Reports + use Electronic Billing Worksheets to facilitate monthly Billing/Revenue Recognition meetings.
    • Every month, PMs should conduct transaction management and project analysis prior to attending a Billing/Revenue Recognition meeting to determine if any transactions should be updated, transferred, written off, or put on hold. Accounting + Operations should facilitate monthly meetings by client to analyze the PMs recommendations and make final decisions on billing, revenue recognition and write offs.

Once you’ve successfully launched Platinum PM and Time Entry, it will be time to turn your sights towards Platinum Accounting! Just like above, this will be another great opportunity to implement accounting and finance best practices, allowing your data to be exported and visualized for actionable insights.

The Workamajig® name and the Workamajig® logo are the exclusive trademarks of Creative Manager, Inc. and are registered in the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.

Filed Under: Blog

Data Driven Decision Making in the Creative Firm

November 1, 2017 by Jessica Stephens

For the last decade, we have been helping creative agencies who are struggling to balance their Creative and Culture with the demands of Profitability. And while integrated platforms like Advantage, WorkBook® and Workamajig® help increase throughput and provide integrated financial and operational data, we’ve found our clients are struggling to leverage that raw data to improve decision making and change behavior. Enter AgencyStory™.

For the last three years, we have worked jointly with recognized industry leaders, authors and vendors in the business intelligence community to develop a patent-pending analytics solution, designed specifically for the marketing services industry.  AgencyStory extracts raw data from platforms like Workamajig and creates a series of “curated” scorecards, dashboards and KPIs that are engineered to help agency Principals and Sr. Managers make tough decisions, grow and make lasting change to their cultures.

One of our AgencyStory dashboards, the Utilization Scorecard, was recently featured in The Big Book of Dashboards by Steve Wexler, Jeffrey Shaffer and Andy Cotgreave. We were honored to be included in this comprehensive reference book by recognized experts, which highlights effective visualization examples across many industries and platforms.

We’re excited to be able to offer you a digital excerpt of the 12-page Utilization Scorecard chapter here; contact us if you want to see how your agency’s data stacks up!

Filed Under: Blog

From Chaos…to Creativity

March 3, 2016 by Vanessa Edwards

Lsung in einer unbersichtlichen Situation - Konzept

Over the last six years, CPI has helped over a hundred agencies through the rigors of identifying, training, deploying or redeploying their integrated systems. If you are considering (or struggling with) adopting a tool like Advantage, Workamajig ® or WorkBook… we have provided a brief synopsis of the “critical success factors” that will either make or break your deployment.

Top 10 Takeaways: Integrated Software Deployment

  1. Ensure principals/stakeholders are bought-in when tool is selected
  2. Don’t bite off more than your culture can chew; be realistic
  3. Establish a phased deployment plan; avoid resource overload
  4. Develop an “Implementation Team” to shadow consulting team
  5. Identify, cultivate and retain departmental “Champions”
  6. Absolutely ensure desired metrics drive/inform your system setup
  7. Use the deployment as an opportunity to adopt industry best practices
  8. Ensure agency workflows are compatible and aligned with your tool
  9. Invest in end-user training; train, train… and then retrain
  10. Build an internal “Center of Excellence” to ensure tool’s stickiness

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Advantage, Advertising Agency, Agency Best Practices, Creative Agency, Digital Agency, Integrated Agency, Integrated Software, Workamajig, Workbook

The Project Management – Account Management Divide

May 22, 2014 by Vanessa Edwards

blog-post-image
Over the years, we’ve worked with marketing and advertising agencies in all shapes and sizes – digital shops, full-service niched firms, design heavy shops, PR firms – with anywhere from 7 to 500 employees. No matter the agency position, niche or size, we consistently see confusion and struggles in one area in particular:  the division between Account Management and Project Management.

Agencies are finally starting to realize the advantages of having a robust and discrete PM discipline, much in the way other industries have been leveraging PMs for decades.  And while agencies are selling creativity and compelling content, they are also selling TIME.  Unfortunately, mismanagement of their time is costing them tremendous profits, stability and negatively impacting their culture.

Unfortunately, the solution is not as easy as hiring some PMs and buying some PM software (Workamajig, Advantage, Agile PLM, etc.).   The reality is that agencies are facing a myriad of challenges integrating this new discipline into their organizations, including:

  1. Cultural resistance
  2. AM/PM conflict
  3. Poorly defined roles + responsibilities
  4. Poorly defined workflows
  5. Duplication of effort + loss of efficiencies

We get that it’s confusing.  But we’re here to help!   Here’s how we see the division of these two disciplines working the most effectively and efficiently in marketing agencies:

 

Project Management is the discipline of managing marketing programs and their subsequent deliverables from Conception throughout the Agency Workflow, to Project Completion and Delivery.  The PM discipline is also responsible for drafting initial project timelines and work-back schedules, as well as routing deliverables through all departments to keep all projects on schedule within an overarching program or campaign timeline; PMs understand all of your agency’s capabilities and know the step-by-step details required to deliver a successful program.  The PM discipline also involves managing all financial aspects of a program, including initial scoping and cost-based estimating, ongoing budget to actuals management, identifying and managing scope creep and protecting final project margin.

Bottom Line:  A Project Manager’s role is to be the Agency Advocate.

  • In depth knowledge of capabilities and resources of agency
  • Builds strong working relationship with all producers of the work
  • Drives the tactical production of all projects/programs
  • Manages systems/tools that contribute to project/program success
  • Ensures “the work” is on budget, on time and on quality

Account Management is the discipline of guiding and developing clients’ marketing programs, providing strategically sound solutions to clients’ business objectives. The AM discipline is responsible for providing value-based pricing and writing proposals and Statements of Work for new and existing clients, as well as continuously looking for opportunities to cross-sell and up-sell agency value; AMs understand all the solutions in your agency’s arsenal and know how to package them up in the best way to solve their clients’ problems.  The AM discipline maintains deep knowledge of their clients’ business, industry and competition and is ultimately responsible for the overall success of their clients’ overarching programs.

Bottom Line: The Account Manager’s role is to be the Client Advocate.

  • In depth knowledge of client’s business, industry + competition
  • Builds strong working relationship with client
  • Drives the strategic direction of account
  • Pitches + defends agency work, concepts and proposals
  • Ensures the work is on brand and achieves client goals

To be successful, these two disciplines MUST work closely together.  They are flip sides of the same coin, approaching situations from opposite perspectives – each of which has tremendous value to keeping the agency healthy and profitable.

If you don’t have a dedicated PM and AM discipline, we STRONGLY suggest you invest the time and effort to create two unique disciplines.  Start by creating dividing lines between the various tasks and responsibilities mentioned above, and train your team to start thinking about the differences between the two disciplines.  Once you start to see how the disciplines differ – and how they can work together to make your agency more successful – it won’t take long before you divide up the disciplines into unique roles.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Account Management, Advantage, Advertising Agency, Agency Best Practices, Agency Operations, Creative Agency, Digital Agency, Integrated Agency, project management, Workamajig

747,300 Reasons for Better Timekeeping

August 4, 2011 by Vanessa Edwards

I’ve had the fortune of consulting with many marketing agencies across the country, ranging in size from 10-100 employees, at various rates of growth and stages of maturity. The one thing that binds them together is their ongoing struggle with time tracking.

If done properly (and with the correct software solution) timekeeping should give principals a detailed view of what is happening within their agency…not what they “think” is happening. Unfortunately, many agencies are not tracking time in a manner that provides actionable information. Worse, we’ve found that even among agencies that do track time, very few actually use best practices. Often, their data becomes inconsistent, inaccurate and useless for decision-making.

The only thing worse than not tracking time is tracking time inaccurately, and then making decisions using flawed data. Measuring time properly in your agency will give you three critical things needed to run an organization profitably:

1. Up-To-Date Project Actual Budgets

2. Utilization by Person

a. Billable Time, by Person-by-Service

b. Non-Billable Time, by Person-by-Service

3. Agency Realization

1. One of the biggest gains from logging time properly is the ability to have up-to-date project actuals for the client services team. This allows them to see when a project is going over budget, and work with clients to get additional budget to complete the project or manage the over-servicing and over-delivering that might be happening from inside the agency, that has caused this project to go off-track.

For small agencies this can be done manually by comparing basic time tracking software to manual excel budgets; however, with agencies over 10 people I highly recommend a software that can track estimates, budgets and actuals by both service (the rate you charge i.e., graphic design or project management) AND task (the phase of the project you are currently in i.e., discovery, concepting, production). This additional insight is critical for empowering client services teams to catch scope creep in each phase of a project vs. just by overall project budget. Workamajig and Advantage are great software solutions for this type of project management and timekeeping. QuickBooks is not a sufficient time-tracking tool above 10 people, and getting updated and accurate actuals from Accounting in a timely fashion is usually unlikely.

2. Utilizations are a critical piece to understanding how your agency is operating on the inside. People’s time should be broken down between billable and non-billable services. Most agencies have 20-50 billable and non-billable functional codes. The more capabilities your agency has, the larger the functional code list. A capability-niched agency might only have 15 codes whereas a full service agency will likely have over 50. Some software solutions call these codes services (Workamajig) and some call them tasks (TimeFox), but at the end of the day it is simply the function completed by an employee that is connected to a rate that you charge the client.

Believe it or not, it’s just as critical to track non-billable functional codes as it is to track billable functional codes. For agencies that are tracking non-billable time, they’re usually doing it in a single admin bucket, meaning there is no way to tell what any of the actual time is for. Most billable employees should have no more than 1-1.5 hours a day in admin, which would include non-billable company staff meetings, non-client related emails, and timesheet entry. There are other non-billable tasks that keep employees from being billable that should be measured like HR and Management time, Business Development or Marketing time, as well as IP Development for your own agency. You can only expect an employee to be 80%-90% billable if they are not participating in any other non-billable functions.

3. Agency realization is comparing the amount of billable time logged by your employees to the actual fee dollar amount that gets billed to the client. Agency realization is probably the biggest factor adding to low profitability in agencies and is often the result of broken workflow processes throughout the agency. These agencies tend to have extremely high workloads amongst their teams; however, many are fighting just to stay profitable. How is this possible? Agency realization is usually the key in these situations and is an indicator of low effective hourly rates. Meaning, you may indeed have high billable utilizations, but many of those billable hours are not actually getting billed to the client (thus giving you a lower effective hourly rate). Poor realizations are usually a sign of:

a. Over-servicing and over-delivering by agency employees

b. Not issuing change order to clients

c. Taking on projects outside an agency’s core capabilities

d. Principals/business development “investing” in a client by doing more work than is agreed to in the SOW (or by giving an unearned discount)

Tracking time correctly can help you identify which of these issues you might be facing. Over-serving and over-delivering is by far the most likely offender in most agencies. Many agencies have a culture where they will always deliver filet mignon steak even if a client is only willing to pay for a cheeseburger. It is critical for these firms to begin selecting clients that want and will pay for filet; otherwise they will continuously find themselves wrestling with realization and profitability challenges.

In order to measure your realization (at a detailed level) it is critical to have an integrated accounting and project management software like Workamajig or Advantage. Once an agency hits 25 people, this type of integrated measurement and reporting tool is critical to managing profitable growth. Smaller firms experiencing explosive growth should consider investing earlier than 25 people to make sure they are making the right decisions for growth based on accurate data.

How is timekeeping done properly?

Setting Up Your Services:

As we mentioned above, it is critical to know what services/functional codes people are doing in order to effectively manage your agency to profit. This being the case, it is critical you take some time to set up your services/functional codes properly. The goal of setting up your services is to make sure you can effectively measure the duties that require different skill sets so they can then be managed properly.

A great example is that of a blended role client services person. It valuable to know how much time this person is spending managing budgets and timelines vs. attempting to upsell and cross-sell their clients. Since these two things fall into different roles, it is easy to separate them into different functional codes, e.g. Account Management and Project Management. However, it is not as clear when separating things like graphic design and production design. It is less important that you follow industry best practices, but that you apply your rules consistently. What if you discovered your Art Director is getting bogged down doing production design instead of providing creative guidance to your designers and clients? This information allows you to either rearrange workloads or potentially hire someone to take the junior work off of your Art Director’s plate. Either way, you now have the data to be able to make the right decision for your agency.

Also, I encourage you to have a set of service/functional codes for each department, and that they be connected to a specific rate. Having a blended rate or separate rates for each code doesn’t necessarily matter. You might even have a special set of rates for certain clients who do significant amounts of business with your agency. Your services and rates should be based on the complexity of the work, not necessarily on the seniority of the person doing the task. You can’t possibly charge your client Creative Direction service rates even if your creative director is the one doing the production design work!

Rolling Timekeeping Out to Your Team:

Whether you are starting from scratch or just rolling out a few more services/functional codes, it is critical here to remind people that timekeeping is how agencies not only survive but also flourish. You will never know how profitable you are, or how profitable you could be, unless you measure both non-billable and billable time in your agency. Remind people that this isn’t about micro-managing them, its about making sure they are servicing their clients properly and not over-servicing, over-delivering or burning people out. Remind them that the profit goes back into the company (in many forms) and it’s even a good idea to consider both a carrot and a stick option for compliance with timekeeping. But remember: if you will never fire talent over timekeeping don’t pretend you will. It only makes principals look bad when employees don’t comply and never get fired.

Remember the Top 3 Tenets of Good Timekeeping

1. Employees must fill out their timesheets every day. If they don’t, it’s impossible to accurately record what they actually worked on, and you won’t gain accurate data to make informed decisions.

2. Always log what you are doing, NOT what your title is. It is critical to know what employees are actually doing, not what you thought you hired them to do. Maybe your expensive Creative Director is doing production design… or so much HR management that they can’t stay billable. Also, it’s vital to let employees know that measuring time is not a punishment; rather it is a tool to manage burnout, onboard needed skill sets and to protect your culture.

3. Enter your ACTUAL time worked, not a rounded up/down figure. It is critical to have people log their exact hours every day vs. a rounded up/down figure. This allows managers/principals to manage employee burnout and know whether their agency is running too bloated to stay profitable, or too lean to keep a healthy culture.

How Much Can Proper Timekeeping Change My Agency?

It is often easy for a principal or executive to see their team’s utilizations by just spending time on the floor and seeing how busy everyone is. Unfortunately, agency realization is not something you can see easily and, as discussed before, is the culprit for most agencies lack of profitability. Most agencies have a 60-80% average realization of all billable employees. Meaning, an agency is unable to bill for 20-40% of all employees billable work! In order to determine what you could gain as an agency from accurate timekeeping, let’s take a rough SWAG at calculating your billable realization.

Make a list of all the billable employees in your firm. In the column next to their name put their average billable utilization rate. If you aren’t currently tracking time you will just have to take a guess based on how busy they have been working on client projects on average over the year. Multiply each person’s average billable rate by the total available yearly hours 1,880, (taking out vacation and holidays), and then by their average billable hourly rate. You should get the total revenue number that should have been billed to clients for this person’s work. Then multiply this number by 20% in one column and 40% in another column. Total each column (both low and high estimates) to see how much your agency has to gain in profit in one year from effectively managing operations and timekeeping.

As you can see above, this agency could potentially add $747K to profit in one year by managing to their realizations, not by working people harder!

Unfortunately, timekeeping has become a dirty word in agencies because it has always centered around working people harder instead of focusing on capturing the work people are already doing. A simple change in perspective with the right measurement tools allows principals to finally find the balance between the time needed by creatives to do award-winning design and an organization’s need for profitability to create a stable environment for growth.

 

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Agency Best Practices, Agency Operations, project creep

Don’t be hit by the Scope “ROPE-A-DOPE”

July 8, 2011 by Vanessa Edwards

I was talking with one of our clients the other day and she was expressing frustration about how a new project is already set to fail because the proposal was under-estimated when it was delivered to the prospect.  This is such a common practice in Agencies – basically do anything you can to get the prospect to say yes to the deal, even if that means there’s no physical way to get the project done within your client’s allocated budget.

I know that many Agency Principals are responsible for new business development in their firms, so yes, I’m calling you out, Mr./Ms. Principal!  Include your Project Manager in the proposal process from the beginning and you’ll have a better-scoped and estimated project, resulting in a smoother Project Life Cycle, higher utilizations, higher effective hourly rates, and more overall agency profit.  Sounds like the Holy Grail, huh?

As we tell all of our clients, it’s a Creative Performance Best Practice to have your Project Manager estimate your proposed project BEFORE any costs are ever shared with your prospect.  For an accurate estimate you need someone with a clear and deep understanding of what it REALLY takes to get a project to completion.  The project manager should create an accurate project architecture of tasks and an estimate by each task AND service which will help you capture all costs as well as a reasonable timeline.  It is critical that this be completed BEFORE you deliver a proposal to your prospect.  Backing into a scope from an already delivered proposal is a project manager’s nightmare and usually results in a fit of curses directed towards the said salesperson!

We are not saying that you should never take work that doesn’t meet your fully scoped rates, but rather you should be estimating the full price of the work and offering a discount to your client so they can really appreciate the amount of work you are doing.  This also helps set the stage for future engagements to be profitable and gives the account and project managers more negotiating power if the project starts to creep out of scope.  (Keep in mind that we are assuming that there aren’t any deliverables that can be pulled out that wouldn’t compromise the campaign/project objectives.)

Once the difference between the client needs and the client’s budget has been established, there needs to be an internal declaration of investment from an agency executive/principal stating they are willing to make this investment in this particular client prior to delivering the SOW to the client.  It is critical to document these investments, as many principals/executives do not realize how much investing they are doing by taking on low budget projects.  Once this happens the project manager should manage the budget to the original estimated hours.   Any hours above the client’s budget but below the originally scoped price should be written off and tagged as CLIENT INVESTMENT.  Any hours above the originally scoped estimate should be considered truly over budget and should be reviewed and written off as either OVERSERVICING/DELIVERING, MISCOPING or UNCAPTURED SCOPE CREEP.  Only something determined beforehand by an agency principal/executive should be labeled as CLIENT INVESTMENT.  Anything else that goes out of scope should be tagged as UNCAPTURED SCOPE CREEP or transferred to another project to be captured in the next project.

The ideal steps to go from proposal to project are something like this – from the 50,000-foot view:

1.     Salesperson/Principal gives Project Manager a draft SOW with detailed deliverables that the Project Manager can use to set up a new project

2.     Project Manager creates the new project with an estimate of the REALISTIC hours by specific service it will take to accomplish the tasks (considering your team and prospect’s idiosyncrasies, like your Graphic Designer’s need to create 4 options instead of just 2; or your Prospect who is extremely detail oriented and will likely want at least 6 rounds of revisions)

3.     Project Manager delivers estimate to Salesperson/Principal; together they discuss any changes that need to be made to the estimate to match up with the prospect’s expectations (it is very rare that the work actually being completed and what is presented to the client match 100%.  Example: Most clients are unaware of how much client services time it actually takes to complete their projects and many agencies hide this under some form of design of digital programming.)

4.     Project Manager creates new estimate with the rearranged hours (keeping original estimate for future reference and trafficking)

5.     Salesperson/Principal delivers SOW with estimate to prospect; prospect approves or gives agency allocated budget.

6.     Principal/Executive approves client investment amount to make up difference and delivers SOW with clear client investment discount so prospect understands the value of the work being delivered.

7.     Project Manager approves original estimate, which becomes the budget, and work begins on the project

8.     Team members enter their actual hours spent (that’s a whole other blog post!) into timesheets throughout the project lifecycle

9.     Project Manager reviews budget by service AND task (may only be possible with certain technologies) on daily basis to make sure hours are in scope; checks in with team members re: deadlines and deliverables

10.   Project Manager discusses budget red flags with Principal to make adjustments to the amount of time allocated to tasks if project is in jeopardy of going over budget

11.   At the end of the project, Project Manager pulls a final budget report to show Salesperson/Principal how time was actually spent on project.  Any time above the client’s budget but below the original scope should be written off and tagged as CLIENT INVESTMENT.  Anything over the original budget should be discussed in an official post-mortem with the team and written off and tagged correctly.

12.   Salesperson/Principal use post-mortem and write off information to inform future SOW’s & estimates

Including your Project Manager in the proposal process from the very beginning not only results in a happier Project Manager, but it allows you to get paid by your client for the work you are actually going to do – again, resulting in higher utilizations, higher effective hourly rates and more overall agency profit.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Agency Operations, agency sales best practices, change orders, out of scope, project creep, project management, project underbudget, write off

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