There is no more useful tool for analysis than data – but there is a skill in using the right statistics at the right time to improve your agency’s viability. With experience at EY, PWC and more, Adelphi’s CEO Margaret Manning is adept at finding the figures that could help you fix your finances. Offering even more insight is the Founder and CEO of this series’ fantastic sponsor, Just After Midnight.
We go through the difficulty in delegating and letting go, which functions should come first when you undertake a digital transformation, and cover some of the hidden costs of client acquisition that can often go under the radar!
Episode 3 in this series of Word On The Street also dives into how constraining a timesheet business model can be, and the utility in keeping your contacts for the long run.
This episode covers
- Defining your optimal client base
- Cost-effectiveness vs economic-effectiveness
- The big step in delegating responsibility
- Hidden costs of client acquisition
- Using the right data at the right time
- The downsides to timesheet models
Word on the Street is lucky enough to be sponsored by the wonderful team at Just After Midnight who are experts in uptime. Whatever the issue, whatever the time of day, they are supporting your websites and applications 24/7, while your team sleeps. Get a month of support free at: https://www.justaftermidnight247.com/street
Links & references
Katie Street: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiestreet/
Margaret Manning: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margaret-manning-obe/
Adelphi Digital: https://www.linkedin.com/company/adelphi-digital-consulting-group/
Sam Booth: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuelbooth/
Just After Midnight: https://www.linkedin.com/company/just-after-midnight/
https://www.justaftermidnight247.com/
Get in touch: [email protected]
Episode highlights
“I’ve actually started to think – instead of saying cost effective, maybe we should actually say economically effective or financially effective rather than cost effective.” – 7:13 – Margaret Manning
“Up until a certain point, there are some things it’s best not to let go. But every single person that’s running a business has got the capability of still being effectively in charge, up to higher and higher levels. ” – 11:17 – Margaret Manning
“Don’t even start a digital transformation project without transforming your procurement team. If your procurement team is still procuring, in the old fashioned way, you’re not going to transform anything there.” – 17:42 – Margaret Manning
“The data that you need is going to be different for every business model, but you need that data and very often that data is subsumed into just the cost of production. ” – 24:46 – Margaret Manning
“That level of data – the correct data, at the correct time – shouldn’t be something that is initiated primarily from the finance team. It needs to be initiated with the finance team, by the business. It’s a business decision.” – 32:01 – Margaret Manning
“The other part of data that is so often a constraint on agencies is their time sheeting model. I think timesheets really can completely constrain an agency by forcing it to make decisions based on data that frankly can often be wrong.” – 34:50 – Margaret Manning
“Understand where you want to go. You need to know what you want your agency to be. What you want to do, as well: What’s your ambition for your agency? What’s your team’s ambition for the agency? What do your team want? Once you have that, then work backwards.” – 38:51 – Margaret Manning
“I always find we end up with people coming out of the woodwork where I thought that was a dead opportunity, two or three years down the line. So just trying to keep that momentum up is particularly difficult because of the constraints, but that’s fun for me and I think for a lot of agencies it would be important.” – 39:43 – Sam Booth