How Copy House managed significant and swift growth using Synergist

The problem

Navigating rapid growth

The team quadrupled in size within two years, and had a series of new client wins to manage. They needed to really start to get a grip on their processes and how to effectively manage the new resources. 

“We were running off a Google sheet trying to log people’s time, estimate and keep it all in one centralised place.”

Steven explains things got complicated and overwhelming very quickly and “if you’ve got multiple people in there too, mistakes can happen.”

“Our decisions were often based on general feeling around the team and workload, rather than factual data. Not having the right tool in place made it difficult to plan and show timelines to clients or even internally.”

“It was clear we needed a new system. Our Google Sheets and other project management tools could only get us so far.”

Without a system that shows agency capacity, pipeline and connects every aspect of your business from new business to delivery, Steven says you “can hit a lot of bottlenecks”.

“With our sudden growth and change, we knew we needed one centralised agency system to hold as much information as possible. We didn’t have a real view on how things were actually looking.”

The solution

A central system with flexibility

From its reporting breadth to shared resource schedule, there were several reasons Steven knew Synergist was the best agency management system for Copy House and matched its needs as a growing agency.

“I’ve not seen other tools with such an in-depth shared view, it’s made us question our processes at times. We’ve pulled out multiple things from it, different ideas on ways of working, which has been massively useful.”

For Copy House, Synergist offers the freedom they want their team to enjoy through the shared calendar functionality. 

“We don’t want to be dictating their whole day/week to them, so we can build time for training and other tasks into their schedules which can be planned in advance. There is also great visibility around holidays. And it’s these little things that make a really big impact.”

“The resourcing tool means we can book everybody in knowing the team have visibility on what everyone is working on. Which, from a planning perspective, allows project and account managers to work together to help move things around if required. And the fact that we can search for a job directly from the schedule makes this process easier, as we can quickly adapt, move or add work if we need to.”

“This visibility, especially for a remote working company is needed. We want everybody to be dedicated to a client, a deliverable, and a set timeframe. A shared system allows us to communicate this and keep people on track. It pulls everything together.”

Steven explains how Synergist’s integration with Xero “brings visibility to our Account Managers that connects them with our Finance team” as invoices feed directly into the accounting platform. “Each month, we bill and invoice on time.”

Setting up our billing plans and being able to use that as an invoice tracker helps us see exactly what’s confirmed work and what’s going to be billed.”

“It’s about forward planning and having that future view.”

The onboarding process was another significant reason Synergist was chosen, with Steven saying: “Agency Works have a wealth of experience working agencies and their individual processes, so you’re tapping into a lot of knowledge.”

“Having your own consultant to lean on and shape the software step-by-step makes it feel even more bespoke. It’s also someone to run things by to make sure I’m looking at things in the right way.”

“It’s a great process to go through. You need to get your foundations right to ensure everything is performing as it should be.”

Now their agency management system is up and running, Steven says it helps them see where they can improve efficiency to plan ahead, knowing their system will grow as they do.

The return

Full visibility and in-depth reporting

With Synergist’s shared schedule we can see when people are working, or not, so we can see how that impacts our agency capacity, revenue and costs prior to implementation.”

"The reporting suite is very useful and comprehensive. There are so many different ways to run reports, depending on what you need to look at. Whether it’s utilisation, timesheets, etc, you have the option of viewing standard reports or more in-depth data in the data viewer.”

“We can see estimated time vs actual time and start to identify potential opportunities and issues easier, overall helping improve performance.”

“This is invaluable, especially as we have many clients with a lot of small deliverables to keep track of. Synergist allows us to take a step back and look at each one individually and easily, as a whole team.”

“And having all the dashboards set up for agency management and performance views, we can start to set standards around things like utilisation rates and billings per head. That quick view allows us to monitor things on a daily basis, and that makes all the difference.”

In keeping with their ‘keep it simple’ mantra, Synergist’s bespoke nature means Copy House can make changes in their reporting and processes as they grow.

“It really simplifies things because it allows us to adapt.”