How can a boutique agency with a smaller staff juggle project visibility on top of the day-to-day labor of executing work? Read on for three straightforward tips to help you improve your agency’s project visibility with a limited impact on your time or budget.
Why Project Visibility Matters for Your Agency
If you dread client check-ins because it takes you ages to determine how the work is progressing, then you’ve run into the main reason that project visibility is critical for agencies of all sizes. By prioritizing project visibility, you’ll have a clear sense of the health of all your agency’s open projects and a better understanding of your team’s current workload and utilization. Project visibility is an essential ingredient for the long-term profitability and efficiency of your agency. See below for three handy tips to help you improve visibility into your agency’s projects.
Tip #1: Invest in Regular Project Status Reports
While it may seem counterintuitive to create an additional item on your weekly to-do list, carving out time to spend on regular project status reports will bring greater efficiency in the long term. It’s an opportunity to get everyone on the same page, for you to gather data on the project, and provide communication to keep your client happy.
Tip #2: Project Collaboration and Communication
In addition to regular project status reports, improving internal communication with your team and external communication with the client will improve project visibility for everyone. At the start of any project, establish clear lines of communication so that everyone knows what to expect and what is the most efficient way to share updates. Increase collaboration by sharing access to project management tools with your clients, enabling them to proactively check project updates themselves.
Tip #3: All About Analytics
This is another example where investing a little time in setting up a process will aid your team throughout a project. The quickest way to see how work is progressing is to set up dashboards or reports to access data from time spent on different tasks to the project completion percentage. By making the data easy to access, it will be even easier for you to keep an eye on your open projects. Your current project management tools should have reporting features built in, it’s time to dig in and use them!
Rely on Agency Management Experts
Still struggling to gain visibility into your agency’s projects? Turn to the agency management experts at PCI – we have a program just for smaller agencies. We can help you streamline your agency’s operations and be up and running on Deltek WorkBook in just 4-8 weeks. Contact us for a demo and get started on the path to better project visibility today!
