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For the Record: How Blockchain is Changing ERP

Without a doubt agencies around the world will be familiar with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. Indeed, it’s virtually unheard of in today’s fast-paced advertising industry that an agency can remain competitive without one. For today’s competitive agency, everything from Customer Resource Management (CRM) to production planning to project management to marketing and sales, materials and inventory management, to finance can (and should) be integrated in an effective ERP solution....

The Future of Agencies: What to do in Uncertain Times?

Many things are changing for the ad industry today. We’ve seen, for instance, an increased pressure for agencies to go global, to expand their reach to appeal to an even greater international audience. We’ve also witnessed the onset of the much-discussed Agility Era, Forbes’s term for the emergence of flexible, ad-hoc production as a preference over the stable Agency-Of-Record (AOR) relationships that had previously dominated the agency landscape.[1] These changes are certainly important....

How Agencies Can Go Agile in Five Simple Steps

It seems that everywhere you go, today’s agencies hear lots about Agile. Although even seasoned project managers may not be able to define just what Agile is, almost everyone agrees that it’s a working methodology that agencies should know and value. Other executives and project managers will ask: how can we change our current practices so that we can become more Agile? Here we’ll outline five important steps your agency can take to go fully Agile....

How to Manage an Agency Across Multiple Time Zones

One many agencies are giving up brick-and-mortar office space in favor of geographical mobility is clear: it saves money. Remote teams don’t need office space, furniture, utilities, snacks, coffee machines, or water coolers. Taken together, not paying for those items can equal significant savings for an agency. Other monetary benefits arise from the fact that remote workers are far less likely to call in sick, and they can be paid only for productive time....

Eight Ways ZAG Makes Your Creative Firm More Profitable

Today, every agency wants to know how they can improve profitability. It is perhaps the most important concern that drives nearly all business decisions. From deciding which projects to prioritize to challenges around resource management, agencies’ central question seems to be: how does it affect our bottom line? Here we’ll outline eight ways the resources at ZAG will not only help to improve your agency’s bottom line, but will help sustain your agency’s growth into the future....

Collaboration Challenges agencies face and their Solutions

In today’s advertising agency landscape, collaboration is perhaps one of the most important yet under-discussed topics. Virtually every aspect of creative work, business decision, element of daily operations, and within every department—from executives to managers to designers—everything these days involves collaboration. This means that when challenges arise while collaborating, the consequences that be significant...

4 Common problems in the Review and Approval Process

The review and approval process is one of the most important parts of every creative project. It allows your clients a final opportunity to offer any critical feedback as they weigh your deliverables against the original project specification. But what exactly goes into this process? And how can your team improve it? Here we’ll look specifically at issue tracking, project management, review specification, and isolating the final approval process....