Agency SMEs: tools to thrive in a hybrid world

Remote working at an agency

This situation is particularly challenging for creative agencies, because so much of what they do relies on collaboration within and across teams. This is exacerbated among smaller agencies by the tendency for them to be operating siloed management systems for different areas of activity: project management, collaboration, finances and CRM (customer relationship management), for example.

These are the problems enterprise software company Silversoft aims to address within the agency space. With success in the South African advertising industry, Silversoft has now expanded into the UK.

“A small agency can run on Google Sheets or Excel with an appropriate accounting system. But when that team starts to scale, there is an inherent need for a strong time-tracking solution, and often another separate solution for managing resources. This is often bolstered by further solutions for managing clients, projects, tasks and deliverables,” says Iain Ravenhill, sales director, UK and Europe at Silversoft.

“By the time the agency is 20-plus people [strong], it’s not uncommon to see a myriad of platforms strung together to create visibility of their work.

“If C-level executives now understand that they can trust their staff to work remotely, then we provide them with a platform. This platform helps them maintain control of their business while giving their team the creative latitude to do what they do best in the way that suits them best,” Ravenhill explains.

Source: The Drum