Can you run your agency on spreadsheets? (And why you shouldn’t)

Once upon a time spreadsheets were the go-to for every agency. And while we’re not here to spreadsheet bash – they can have their place – it’s become clear that once agencies start to scale and grow, they need something more sophisticated. 

Here, we explain why spreadsheets have a short shelf-life... and how an agency management system can be the long-term answer. 

Separation and silos

One of the biggest issues with using spreadsheets is there tends to be a lot of them, each with a different owner. Which in turn makes it incredibly difficult to know where to find the most up-to-date information. They are rarely linked, so you end up with lots of pockets of data, sitting all by themselves. 

Agencies might manage okay with spreadsheets in the early days, while there are just a few people in the business (although even then it can be far from ideal). But what generally happens is that with growth comes increased process, and with increased process comes more complexity. Headcount becomes bigger, desks become further away, and it starts to become clear that there needs to be a more joined-up system. 

For example, a spreadsheet might work fine at first for logging live projects. But then you need to add opportunities. Then staff availability. Then project-specific files. Then timesheets... budgets... client and supplier contact details. The list is pretty exhaustive, and having each element of running an agency sitting on its own little spreadsheet will only lead to chaos and confusion. 

One more thing to add here is that it can also be hard to track spreadsheets. If they’re held on one person’s laptop and they become ill or leave the agency – how do you access this information? 

Data maintenance 

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to a spreadsheet, which means whoever creates each one will use their own individual approach. These inconsistencies make it very difficult to reconcile the data. 

It’s also pretty easy for errors to creep into spreadsheets. But this is not intuitive software. It won’t let you know something is wrong, but simply display the incorrect figure. And by the time you do start to pick up inaccuracies, you can end up spending valuable time trying to fix the problem. Most data is time critical, so hours spend rectifying issues can defeat the object of the spreadsheet in the first place. 

A comprehensive agency management system, however, has business process logic built in, with checks and tests to save you from such errors.

Out of time

Information scattered across multiple spreadsheets is not live data. In fact, it’s old news by the next day. And agencies need to be working with the most up-to-the minute information in order to make the right decisions. 
An agency management system can be set up to give you alerts, flagging up when data reaches certain points. For example, if a job gets to 50% of its budget, you can then check whether you’re actually halfway through the job. Not easy information to glean from an old spreadsheet. 

Wrong people, wrong job

People join a creative agency for the buzz, the vibrant atmosphere, the thrill of delivering excellence. Not many will said they wanted to spend half their time entering data onto a spreadsheet, looking for information. It’s very demotivating for them to be under deadline pressure but not be able to focus on the task at hand. 

All that wasted time also gets in the way of being able to deliver good client service, even though you want this to be an agency priority – creating a conflict of interests. 
All this time spent sorting through spreadsheets is also time which, in some cases, could be charged. There’s a certain irony that the process you’ve brought in to keep you streamlined could actually be costing you profits.

Multi-user madness

Spreadsheets tend to be created and managed using Excel, notorious for not being designed for collaborative work. 

This means your agency can feasibly have multiple spreadsheets all with different owners – and none of them talking to each other. An agency management system, meanwhile, allows for multiple users all working on the same data (Synergist can be used by 10-500 people). A breath of fresh air when you have a spreadsheet headache. 

Inflexible and intractable

Each spreadsheet is designed to focus on one area or deliver one sort of result. When a separate focus is needed later, the person needing it has two choices: create a new one from scratch or adapt the first one. 

Most people adapt the first spreadsheet, to try to save time. But the expanded spreadsheet is then pulled in two different directions.

For example, various assumptions in the first spreadsheet might be inappropriate in the second. Or some of the formulae may involve historic data that’s no longer relevant. 

But data in a spreadsheet is often given credence. If the same information was simply spoken out loud, the assumptions would more likely be challenged and tested. While spreadsheets have flexibility at cell level, the entire thing might as well be made of stone. 

Once upon a time, spreadsheets were seen as saviours, a brilliant way for organisations to log and view information. But as technology has progressed and agencies have evolved, it’s time to start putting spreadsheets in their place (which is not within an agency). 

Agency management systems have been curated specially to cater for all the needs of a thriving, growing agency, to evolve alongside them and to offer just what they need. Coherent, intelligent, scalable, multi-user, real-time data...