Overview: Operations is a personal passion of mine. I’m not sure if it’s due to starting in engineering before switching to marketing early in my career. Or maybe it’s due to living in the automotive capital and learning about the assembly line (patented in 1901 by Ransom Olds; first moving assembly line for the Ford Model T in 1913) at a young age. But I have always enjoyed mapping out the optimal way to do something and then working on continuously improving it. I take this mantra when framing up agency operations.
To some, agency operations sounds like a vague term and doesn’t feel like a real thing. One challenge is that it doesn’t neatly fall within one of the primary five agency departments: strategy, creative, account, media, and production. But agency operations are truly key and should be engrained within the agency culture.
Below are my thoughts on why operations matter and its key components:
Why Agency Operations:
The importance of operations continues to grow, driven by:
- Financials: client budgets continue to decrease while having increasing expectations for efficiencies and discounts.
- Competition: the amount of competitors continues to increase with consultants, specialized agencies and in-house agencies growing in popularity.
- Projects: continued decrease use of the AOR model with more clients choosing to do project work and jump balls.
- Speed: the space has always required agencies to move quickly but the growth of real-time communication it’s even more important.
What are the Benefits:
Operations should increase “efficiencies”. The value can be seen in several forms – increasing the profitability of the agency / projects, improve the speed of projects, and decreasing the overall pain of getting work done by eliminating inefficiencies and thereby improving overall agency morale.
Who is responsible for Agency Operations:
It really should be a shared responsibility across the entire agency. But without a dedicated focus of having a team oversee, it can fall through the cracks. Some agencies dedicate a separate group, usually laddering up from within production or account groups. Having a non-biased lead that is focused on what’s best for the agency will have best results.
What makes up Agency Operations:
Below is what I feel are the primary components of agency operations:
- Processes: Documenting how the work actually gets done. This includes reviewing the existing workflows by channel and capturing the process. Once defined, collaborate and determine if there are ways to improve. Then ensure that the process is top of mind for team members and embedded into the training curriculum for the agency.
- Tools and Technology: Analysis of each tool and technology that is being used within the agency. This is wide-ranging including internal and external tools: routing, copy edit, and communication tools to servers, team computers, and asset sharing technology. Need to evaluate if they are helping the team as much as possible, understand the competitive set to see if other options are better and stay abreast of the latest updates/new functionality of the existing tools and technology.
- Resource Management: this area overlaps with human resources and finance and includes:
- Organizational structure: Is the way the agency is structured preventing it to be as efficient as possible. How can it be improved?
- Financial modeling: project analysis that reviews the volume of resources used and effectiveness.
- Training: What is being done to help existing workforce continuously improve.
- Analysis of existing employees: A transparent review of the current workforce through the lens of operations. Do they have an operations mindset?
- Infrastructure: This includes the physical space of the agency – from the building itself to the employee work stations and even bathrooms.
So that’s a high level overview of operations. Next up is what are they key learnings of doing agency operations.
If you or someone you know is looking for operations support, feel free to reach out at brianphelps10@gmail.com.
Brian Phelps Consulting (BPC) 