Q+A: Is agency admin killing creativity?

Here Ray Kieser, Global Practice Director: Marketing Communications at Deltek, tells .rising how agency professionals can make operational changes that put creativity first.

Why is it important for everyone within an agency to keep a close eye on business elements like budgets and time spent?

The pressure on agency margins keeps intensifying, driven in large part by client pressures on pricing. It’s putting the industry in a precarious position.

To drive profitable growth in this environment agencies need to do two things: ensure that they’re controlling resources, operating costs and the time their staff are spending on client work as much as they possibly can and protect the time they spend on creative.

Agencies get paid for their ideas — that’s the bottom line. The better the idea, the more a client will pay for it. Great ideas take time.

Have you noticed any trends in the amount of this kind of work falling to creative and account teams?

I’ve been seeing a number of agencies focussing on manager and employee self-service as a way to cut costs. I do think that, as far as account management is concerned, there should be a trend to ensure more ownership of time and profit. Creative time is precious and needs to be carefully managed. It’s the true engine of an agency — nothing should clog the works.

Does the crush of administrative duties impact the ability of agency staff to think and work creatively?

Oh, absolutely. It almost goes without saying: the more time an agency’s best creative minds are spending on administrative tasks, the less time they can spend strategising and creating great ideas.

Creative work is what agencies get paid for, and where many of the marketers we speak to take the most pleasure and pride in their jobs. It should be the focus, not a luxury to be sandwiched between other tasks.

It’s a difficult conundrum: agencies need to keep a tight rein on resources to stay profitable, but at the same time it’s an incredible drain on the core of their business.

What’s TrafficLIVE, and how can it help?

Deltek TrafficLIVE is a front-end agency management system — designed by marketers, for marketers — to optimise people, resources, planning time and expense processes. We designed it to empower agencies to be more effective, more efficient and more profitable.

It’s an immensely useful tool — our clients have told us that it cuts the administrative burden on agencies by as much as 80 per cent. That’s a lot more time to be creative.

To learn more about how Deltek’s TrafficLIVE can help you find more time to be creative watch the short video below. 

https://youtu.be/i0WvwfA-F-8