Who are Rooster Punk? Award-winning B2B marketing agency that puts “the humanity and soul back into B2B marketing” with a focus on storytelling. Rooster Punk support companies with branding projects, content creation, campaigns, ABM and sales enablement.
Who is Andrea Allen? A global B2B marketing operations director with over 20 years' integrated marketing and business operations experience.
"Synergist does what I need it to do, it’s logical and it makes sense.”
“It’s tailored for agencies but is also quite intuitive – makes sense as it’s been designed that way.”
Andrea’s last project before leaving her previous agency was installing Synergist – chosen for its reporting.
When she joined Rooster Punk, it was back to spreadsheets. That meant no reporting, and no clarity.
“Nine months down the line and I’m asking for Synergist. We’re not going to grow if we don’t have proper data.”
“I needed a tool that does the majority of the work, so I can focus on looking at the data and taking on a strategic role.”
“Synergist has a huge chunk of the agency market, so it must be doing something that works.”
“One big win for us was the ability to manage complex projects. The phases, stages and tasks, mean you can make a really long job. And you can have multi-company and different currencies."
“Quote vs estimate vs actuals reporting means we can look at what’s charged vs what it should cost vs what it actually cost.” Andrea said they needed to know how much time they were spending on jobs to work out whether they’re charging enough.
“The DataViewer is really good. Can look at jobs and phases and who has spent time doing what.”
“My favourite report is last month’s forecast vs actual. What did we say we would vs what we are. Something we couldn’t pull before.”
“Synergist is the most logical system I’ve seen for revenue recognition, which is very important and something you can’t do well on a spreadsheet.”
Additional value for RoosterPunk was the fact that Synergist integrates with Xero, which Andrea says “takes out a whole heap of pain”.
When it comes to the way they work, Andrea tells us it’s changed massively. “We don’t have spreadsheets with circular references that don’t add up.”
“Now as I have the information to hand, I can look at the business with more of a commercial focus. You need a commercial mindset to grow. I feel Synergist enables growth.”
Andrea says that they’re now more focused on Operating Profit and Gross Profit.
“Yes, people overrun on time, that’s natural. However, bringing it to focus so people are aware time goes against stuff is key. We aren’t dogmatic about it, if a job overruns we can take it as a learning for next time. What we can do is put our budgets up. It’s really all about continuous improvement.”
When it comes to fixed resource and utilisation, Andrea says they aren’t going with gut feel anymore – “that only takes you so far”.
“We’re winning new clients and keeping them happy. We have a good contribution to the profit because I have this insight and can have more meaningful conversations as a result.”
“It was 100% valuable to have The Agency Works configure the system the way we need. They helped set it up for us, which we don’t have time to do.”
“The training and onboarding were very good, you learn not only how to use system, but actually how to use it well.”
“The Synergist Helpdesk are also very responsive. As the complexity of problems grows; they’re there.”
Andrea explains that, in her previous experience, there wasn’t as much support with previous systems – just access to an online guide and find things out for yourself.
“As an ops director, you’re wearing lots of hats, so don’t have time to just go online – The Agency Works team made it possible, they were really really good.”
“Now we actually have clarity on what we’re doing.”
“The financial investment wasn’t too big – you’ve got to have a system. The hurdle was really about people’s time, getting people to understand they need to spend the time doing it. We had a lot of training and regular refreshers for the team to get the most out of the system.”
Andrea tells us the return on investment for RoosterPunk is hard to quantify exactly but “between last year and this year we’ve grown by roughly 70%. Part of that has to be the structure we’ve put in place.”
“The biggest return is clarity, I can take a strategic role of properly growing a business using data. I can have a conversation at another level.”
“You can look at loads of project management systems but they need to actually work in an agency – a very unique business model. Synergist does what I need it to do, it’s logical and it makes sense.”
“It’s tailored for agencies but is also quite intuitive – makes sense as it’s been designed that way.”
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.