The move towards digital and mobile marketing – which is shoring up confidence in the sector despite today’s challenging economic climate – demands new skills and increased agility. Agencies need to ensure their systems are digital-ready to capitalise on these new opportunities and drive benefits to the bottom line. Resource Management (RM) – essentially a solution for planning, managing and deploying the right people skills at the right time on the right projects – is the key.
The ability to track costs and income on a real-time per-project basis is vital in the new world of agile, social media savvy marketing agencies. Without it, it is impossible to determine which parts of which project are profitable, to monitor over-servicing or even to bill accurately under some new pricing models. Real-time information means agility for agencies, who can reallocate staff time, freelancer effort or even hosting costs to meet demand if they have it. Over time, agencies with the most accurate information are most able to re-align, adopt new functions, identify the need for new skills and train or hire to meet those needs.
All too often, marcoms agencies do not align project estimation, execution and existing capacity. Making ‘guesstimates’ on projects is often the key driver in under- or over-utilisation and both have an immediate impact on project costs and profitability. The ability to change is more important now than it has ever been, with new communications media evolving more rapidly than ever before.
Agencies that are able to manage their resources, income and expenditure properly with RM will ultimately win out.
