Case Study
Growing an agency without growing headcount
How we empowered a creative team to focus on their craft while automating the rest, from sales to service delivery.
Getting two steps ahead
Doing > planning
In the fast-paced world of marketing, growth can be a double-edged sword. Our client was expanding rapidly, but at what cost?
Creatives yearned to create, not drown in admin work. Execs dreamed of scaling without sacrificing billable hours.
The agency stood at a crossroads: continue growing haphazardly or find a way to scale smartly. That's where our partnership started.
Opportunities for improvement
Taming chaos
From creative chaos to streamlined success, here's how we approached transforming the agency's workflow.
1. Making sense of mayhem
We conducted a comprehensive audit, interviewing team members across all levels. By mapping pain points and opportunities, we created a strategic roadmap for transformation.
2. One size doesn't fit all
We carefully analyzed various project types, adding solutions that streamlined processes without stifling creativity or quality. Our goal was efficiency without compromising the variety of work.
3. Getting finances in order
The Sales and Ops team expressed a goal of clearer project milestones mapped to payments that could be more easily kept track of so they got their AR back in order and under 30 days.
4. Projects on auto-pilot
We automated repetitive project management tasks, freeing up the team's time and mental energy. This allowed them to focus on creative problem-solving and client satisfaction.
End-to-end automation
Amped up apps
Hubspot, Clay, and Airtable streamlined the sales-to-project handoff, while Stripe accelerated payments and financial reconciliation.
With Airtable as the central hub, we created a seamlessly integrated ecosystem that automated admin work and freed creatives to focus on their craft.
The result? A tech stack that amplified the agency's capabilities, enabling growth without the growing pains.
All systems go
Our goal was clear: let humans do what they do best – create – and let automation handle the rest.
Pipeline defined
Before we worked together, the team's rapid growth meant frantically managing their sales out of a shared spreadsheet. To reduce things falling through the cracks, the team rallied around Hubspot and worked with us to establish a consistent, scalable pipeline.
Leads supercharged and engaged
The sales team was able to keep up with the marketing teams great efforts by auto-enriching new leads with Clay and automating followups in Hubspot to keep them warm.
Kicking projects off, automatically
When deals were moved to Won in the pipeline, half a dozen automations were triggered to charge the customer with Stripe, file the invoice, and automatically setup the teams project in Notion using the right template for the type of engagement tagged in Hubspot.
Teammates auto-assigned
By using Airtable as a source of truth for project, financial, and employee data, we were able to know team availability and automatically load balance and assign the right people to the right projects.
Updates delivered with a bow
With projects and Notion templates in order, we were able to automate drafting weekly client status updates using simple AI prompts and task data that PM's could simply review, edit, and send.
A clear pulse on the business
With data automatically synced across finances, sales, and projects we were able to automate a customized, weekly snapshot of business performance delivered to the exec team every Monday morning.
Impactful outcomes
Happy clients, happy life
What once was a chaotic juggling act became a streamlined, automated flow that allowed creatives to focus on what they do best while the business continued to scale.
The ripple effects were felt across the entire org: sales cycles shortened and project kickoffs became seamless.
Most importantly, the agency is able to grow without the need for a typical, proportional increases in headcount.
Results, delivered
