With the national economy expected to expand significantly in 2021, marketing and advertising firms with a cloud enterprise resource planning solution in place will be best positioned to take on the new work and prepare for future growth.
A market sector that’s expected to reach $54.6 billion in the U.S. this year, the advertising industry has posted an average 1.2 % compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the last five years. Expected to grow by 4.3% in 2021, the industry includes full-service advertising and marketing agencies; digital agencies; social media agencies; media buying companies; and creative agencies (among others).
With the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) ready to hit its best performance since 1951 this year—after growing by 6.4% during the first quarter of 2021—marketing and advertising firms are anticipating a pretty busy second half of the year.
According to the New York Times, total domestic economic output should return to pre-pandemic levels by summer, with GDP expected to grow by 7.5% overall this year. “This may be the tip of the iceberg,” Oxford Economics’ Gregory Daco told the New York Times. “I think we will see much stronger momentum into summer as health conditions continue to improve, policy support remains in place, and employment strengthens.”
5 Reasons to Adopt Cloud ERP
Like many other companies, advertising and marketing firms often rely on a mix of legacy systems, spreadsheets, and unintegrated software systems to run their businesses. Put in place over time, these systems create massive inefficiencies, waste time, and consume too many manhours.
As they juggle their project portfolios across multiple clients—and as their companies expand and grow—advertising and marketing agencies need cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions that support their end-to-end operations. Here are five ways cloud ERP platforms like NetSuite help agencies gain an edge:
1. Streamlined Project Management
NetSuite streamlines project management, resource optimization, pitch-to-invoice, and other critical advertising business processes. By combining professional services automation (PSA), customer relationship (CRM), and ERP/financials on a single platform, agencies can more efficiently run the end-to-end business operations for their entire organizations.
2. Happier clients
With NetSuite, advertising, digital marketing, and market research agencies can improve their profitability without the threat of project and financial management restricting the organization’s creative juices. “Since many agency workflows are automated and information and insights are readily available,” NetSuite says, “your team will be empowered to spend more time delighting clients.”
3. More accurate project estimates
Armed with complete visibility over past projects, agencies can combine this data with current, available resources and come up with more accurate estimates. In this dynamic business environment, being able to generate quotes that 1) meet clients’ needs and 2) generate agency margins, is more critical than ever.
4. Better Team Collaboration
Any agency operating with disparate point software solutions and spreadsheets knows how difficult it is to pull a team together to work toward a common goal. With cloud ERP, these pain points fade quickly as team members log into the platform from anywhere to complete reports, log their hours, update receivables/payables, and review reports.
5. Real-time organization insights
Reports that used to take weeks or even months to generate can be pulled up quickly via dashboards that executives use to view real-time organizational insights. Then, they can use those insights to make data-driven decisions and benchmark against key performance indicators (KPIs).
A market sector that’s expected to reach $54.6 billion in the U.S. this year, the advertising industry has posted an average 1.2 % compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the last five years. Expected to grow by 4.3% in 2021, the industry includes full-service advertising and marketing agencies; digital agencies; social media agencies; media buying companies; and creative agencies (among others).
With the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) ready to hit its best performance since 1951 this year—after growing by 6.4% during the first quarter of 2021—marketing and advertising firms are anticipating a pretty busy second half of the year.
According to the New York Times, total domestic economic output should return to pre-pandemic levels by summer, with GDP expected to grow by 7.5% overall this year. “This may be the tip of the iceberg,” Oxford Economics’ Gregory Daco told the New York Times. “I think we will see much stronger momentum into summer as health conditions continue to improve, policy support remains in place, and employment strengthens.”
