Creative agencies are in high demand as organizations around the globe seek out the most effective, economical and impactful ways to reach their current and prospective customer bases. The web has become a busy place, and standing out has become more difficult than ever. Knowing this, advertising and digital marketing agencies put a lot of time, effort and elbow grease into getting their clients “seen” and “heard” both online and offline.

Making that happen requires a lot of orchestration and good workflows. It also involves many people and different moving parts, not all of which are located in close proximity to one another. With more of their employees working remotely, for example, creative agencies need unified technology platforms that bring everyone together to collaborate and produce in one place.

The Advertising Sector Continues to Grow

Media agencies are generally bullish on the opportunities that are coming their way in 2023. In fact, Digiday’s recently-released annual report on the state and future of the media agency found that:

• Agencies said clients were nearly equally divided on whether they increased, decreased or kept budgets the same in 2022, with about one-third of agencies selecting each category. (Results trended slightly toward optimism, with 34% of agencies saying clients increased budgets and 31% saying budgets remained the same.)

• Nearly half (49%) of agencies said they expect client budgets to increase in 2023. Of those that expect increases, 44% expect the increases to be a conservative 10-19%.

• Digital display/websites and social media were the top media channels for spending increases in 2022. Digital channels offer flexibility during economic changes because funds can be funneled into or out of them more rapidly than traditional channels.

• Agencies are staffing up e-commerce, retail media and data practices as they anticipate continued digital spending.

As client demand continues to drive a need for their services, many agencies are relying on disparate management and billing systems, leaving leadership without a single actionable view of the business.

“In an era where agencies need both productivity and agility to survive,” NetSuite points out, “systems must adapt to meet the challenges of managing traditionally disparate operational topics such as resource utilization and client billing.” And as retainers and mark-ups are replaced by fee- and performance-based revenue, agencies have to be able to maximize the return on employee efforts and diligently monitor time and expenses.

“Yet many agencies rely on a hodgepodge of disparate management and billing systems, making it challenging to have a single actionable view for agency leaders,” NetSuite points out. Using NetSuite’s cloud computing agency solution, companies can eliminate these challenges,  and streamline their complete agency workflows—from bid to bill.

With personalized dashboards of leads/tasks and ready access to prior work, time, and costs for similar jobs, NetSuite gives creative agencies the fuel they need to be able to win the business and confidently deliver projects on time and within budget.

One System to Manage Your End-to-End Operations

As a long-time NetSuite Implementation Partner, ERP Success Partners knows what it takes to get a growing creative agency off of basic systems, spreadsheets and email data-sharing and onto a unified technology platform. While they work with ERP Success Partners to implement NetSuite, advertising and digital marketing agencies get one system to manage their end-to-end operations.

Agencies also get:

All Under One Roof

With NetSuite, today’s advertising, digital marketing or market research agencies can improve their profitability without worrying over how project and financial management will restrict the organization’s creative juices. Since many agency workflows are automated and information and insights are readily available, your team will be empowered to spend more time delighting clients.

Agencies that replace their disparate systems, disconnected software solutions and endless spreadsheet files with NetSuite are able to simplify their administration processes, enhance their teams’ productivity and ensure high levels of customer service—all on time and within budget. As demand for creative agency services continues to grow, the companies that make the move to NetSuite and ERP Success Partners now will find themselves best positioned to stand out and thrive in this dynamic industry sector.