JBP are a strategic communications consultancy with offices in Bristol, Cardiff, London, Manchester and Warwick.
We met up with Liam Herbert, JBP's then Managing Director, to talk about pulling everything together to gain control of time and resources.
“Since installation we have been able to pull together consistently accurate information for job reporting, which has resulted in far better control of both our time and resources.”
Some of JBP's clients
With a wide diversity of specialisms, from reputation management, parliamentary affairs and planning to B2B, stakeholder communication and consumer PR, JBP needed a management system to ensure accuracy, work tracking, scheduling, campaign progress and reporting for the business and its many clients.
Liam Herbert: “When we started the business it was reasonably practical to rely on spreadsheet-based reporting for time management and accounting."
“However, this soon proved to be both time-consuming and complex to operate, with a great deal of management time being taken to format documents to get appropriate reports on the business and to generate the necessary invoices and progress documents required.”
Client event by JBP
“We made the decision to invest in a full agency management system and reviewed a number of possible off-the-shelf solutions. Only one package met all our requirements and appeared to cater for the more specific needs of the PR industry."
“Since installation, we have been able to pull together consistently accurate information for job reporting, resulting in far better control of our time and resources.
“Forecasting has become much easier and the resultant management information considerably more accurate than ever before."
“Synergist has enabled us to identify spending in areas where we previously lacked information, such as new business activity.
“The system has highlighted and helped prevent over-servicing on certain accounts.”
Client event by JBP
“We have found that management reports and invoicing are far more consistent and simpler to generate at month end, enabling more effective planning and resource management.”
“Synergist has had another excellent benefit. It has placed account administration control in the hands of those people that directly manage the business. This has had the highly beneficial effect of raising commercial awareness among the client management team.
“Good agency systems are critical to ensure you maintain, control and create consistent, comparable records, which can help identify issues before they become problems."
“As with all systems, Synergist relies on good data entry. Fortunately, the timesheet and job control screens are easy to assimilate and very practical to use on a daily basis, though inevitably, there were a few detractors at the outset! However, even they soon saw the benefit when job scheduling and resource management became so much easier.
“I would certainly recommend Synergist to other PR companies, as it has a level of flexibility and capability that is unmatched by other systems on the market.”
Client work by JBP
Whatever your agency looks like – 10 to 500 people, design to digital –
Synergist can be shaped to the way you work.
See it for yourself.
Synergist consultants, Agency Works, will be in touch to arrange your bespoke demo. Their experience working with hundreds of agencies means they can help you work out what's right for you.