5 reasons you need a specialised CRM for total agency management

5 reasons you need specialised CRM for total agency management

If your agency is anything like most, a lot of the goals you’ve set out to achieve in the year ahead hinge on being able to spend more time on the things that really matter. Less admin time, fewer manual tasks; greater focus on creative strategy, more time on new business, right?

While your agency might already be using a CRM tool, helping you manage contact data, here’s a look at what an end-to-end agency management solution can help you do:

1. Boost collaboration for better communication and creativity

With so many people working remotely nowadays, easy collaboration is key to efficiency. That said, even if all of your team members are back in the same building, nobody wants to waste time searching through all kinds of files or endless email threads to find what they’re looking for.

An advanced solution enables you to save and maintain useful data in a shared location. It streamlines your communication between departments and offices by centralising file sharing and reducing the need for email and chat tools. Built-in collaboration features also ramp up the creative process among teams and improve communication with clients by allowing more transparency and making the review and approval process far easier.

2.Make project and resource management a breeze

In the agency world, efficiency and productivity are the cornerstones of profitability. Without visibility into project progress, costs and your team’s capacity, you’re unable to make informed decisions or take corrective action to avoid your bottom line being impacted.

Great agency management tools give you a holistic view of your agency’s performance. You’ll be able to understand where there are inefficiencies in your processes and prevent potential issues; you’ll be equipped to plan effectively, keep clients abreast of task progress and see where expenses need to be reduced. With the right tool, you’ll also be able to help your team members avoid burnout by forecasting their capacity and knowing when it’s time to get extra hands on deck.

3.Manage your pipeline for smart business decisions

In the agency world, managing your pipeline is fundamental to preventing opportunities from being missed and, when they do arise, ensuring that you have the bandwidth to take on new business. To do that effectively, you need a tool that does more than collecting and organising contact information.

A sophisticated agency management solution will enable you   to gauge your resource capacity, as well as build accurate estimates and insightful forecasts so that you’re able to plan if you should be taking on more projects, and then to schedule them accordingly.

4. Take the pain out of financial management

Managing your agency’s finances can become admin intensive and time consuming, not to mention a somewhat stressful task. It doesn’t have to be that way, though.

Using the right tool enables you to take full control of your costs and to forecast your cashflow. With visibility into your financial data, you’re equipped to make smart business decisions and to plan well for the future. Integrating your agency processes into the same tool simplifies month-end closing and reporting, and saves you precious time.

5. Get deeper insight into your agency’s performance with easy reporting

At the end of the day, you need to know that your strategy is on point and that your outputs are impactful and profitable. And you need the data to prove it.

Agency management software enables you to view your analytics and generate reports that showcase your successes and empower your decision making going forward. These insights will help you to allocate your time, resources and budget in the most profitable way.

Now that we have that covered, you might be wondering which solution would be best suited to your agency. Download our handy mini-guide , Why agencies need specialist CRM Systems, to help you decide.