Keeping a modern interactive agency running on course and at maximum efficacy is not an easy task, especially in an agency like Brand New World. Our creative and tech teams are staffed with big thinkers who are always quick to catch on to the next big thing. We’ve always embraced the evolution of the advertising world and we try to quickly learn how new technologies can help our clients connect with their customers in better ways. This creates a unique challenge for our production and management staff, who always need to play catchup by rethinking scope templates, workflows, and base timelines on the fly to accommodate our companies’ ever-changing project needs. This puts extras stress on the production system, the effects of which can be felt all the way down to the junior designer or developer level.
Agency management systems aid in the creation of bids through use of templates, which are consistent with project scopes and timelines. The project timelines tie into deliverables lists, which connect to task assignment and resource tracking, which connect all the way back up to billing. It is clear why it is ideal for all of these processes to be formally connected. Producers can receive alerts when teams are taking too much time to complete tasks. Designers and developers can get reminders of upcoming deadlines. Trafficking is assisted through access to a realtime monitor of what is on everyone’s to do list. And, with all this information at hand, management can feel assured of the project’s health and profitability.
There are a few systems on the market that promise this level of comprehensive detail in their agency management software. Workamajig is one, Clients and Profits is another. Both are completely integrated systems, and offer everything listed above, but there are a few issues with each. Workamajig is good looking and smartly designed, but it is built on the Adobe Flash framework, and is extremely slow and processor intense - making it annoying to deal with on an already-labored design box. C&P is designed for Macs or PCs, and is desktop based, but the interface really looks like 1998. Some screens look a lot like standard File Maker screens, and even worse, some look like Excel. It’s not just the meaty, production-level screens that look this behind the times either. The entire ethos of the company seems to be dated. Take for example this quote from the features page on the site:
“EVERYTHING'S VISUAL Of course, because it's designed for creatives. Clients & Profits is the original mouse-based agency management software. So we know how to put a mouse to work.”
Any software company that lists “mouse-based” as a feature really has some catching up to do on the IA front.
The price of C&P is also an issue. There’s not a monthly subscription model for the agency management suite- you have to buy it, box and all. And it’s 5k to get your foot in the door, plus $500 for each user over the first 10. Unlike Workamajig, which hosts its own software, C&P requires installation on a dedicated server, and it’s not even clear whether or not it is cross platform compatible, or if it can be accessed remotely. Workamajig has a much lower cost entry point, but you have license it for a year, and curiously, the sales team cannot provide you with any demos to test on your own.
The other problem with this and systems like it is that they don’t have the features you really need to manage large developments teams. All though some give you the ability to post files, my research hasn’t turned up any that incorporate version control tools, like subversion, in their repositories. And if you’re using a system like Unfuddle or Tracker for your development teams, and a Workamajig or C&P for the rest of you agency, you then have to rely on two separate systems for production tracking, which basically defeats the purpose of having a centralized tracking system.
Agencies like ours require agile workflow systems that eliminate as many redundant tasks as possible, yet remain flexible enough to quickly adapt to new projects types, and track projects down to the most idiosyncratic technical detail. Unfortunately, while our entire industry is changing, the software we use to manage our agencies can’t really seem to keep up. In the mean time we will continue to balance our proprietary systems with a combination of the best tools we can find, and continue to look forward to days where we can keep up with what we are doing as quickly as we doing it.
