How Eleven agency unlocked more from Synergist

The problem

A system out of step

Eleven set up Synergist back in 2017, but never really relooked at the setup since. “We were still kind of working as we always had done, despite the fact that Synergist was a very different beast now compared to what it was back then.”

That started to matter more when the agency restructured to a hub-and-spoke agency model. “We redesigned the entire operating model for the life cycle of a client relationship and project. We looked at what information we really needed to know, and how we quoted our work.

Once we’d mapped all that out, we needed to make sure our core system was aligned to that,” she says. “We weren’t confident in the sort of profit reporting information we were getting,” Clare explains.

So Eleven put together a brief and started having demos of other systems. “I’d sort of written Synergist off,” Clare admits.

The solution

Unlocking the platform’s depth

But the demos changed Clare’s mind. “Some of the other systems have got nice interfaces, but the depth isn’t there, in terms of how powerful the system is and the depth of information you can get out of it.”

“Synergist did everything we needed it to do and more, and it can be quite heavily customised. One of the other things we liked about it was that it’s UK based and people were super accessible and knowledgeable. It was easy to have a conversation about what we needed, to help us make the system work for us.”

Eleven got started straight away, working closely with Synergist’s agency experts. “We put together an internal working party with people from the core teams. We went through all the ways we needed it to work, and we set it up together.”

“We totally changed how we do project planning. We were using Asana, and we’ve now moved that all into Synergist, so it’s all in one system. We use templates for all our projects now. We use the Gantt chart view, we can export client-friendly Gantt charts, and we’ve introduced the use of tasks there too, so the task becomes a work request in the resource schedule. It’s saving us time mobilising jobs and getting everything scheduled.”

“The thing that revolutionised it was moving to stages and tasks. We were only working at a phase level, which made it tricky to estimate accurately and break work down, whereas now we’re using all the different levels.”

“We’re using the supplier roster differently, as a repository of information and helping people select the right suppliers, with custom fields for pricing and notes on what they’re good to use for. We’re even putting expenses through it now, which we just weren’t doing before.”

“We totally customised all our views, so it’s set up to work exactly how we want it to.”

Eleven built its new pricing model into Synergist too. “We developed a revenue per hour calculator, which tells us how much we need to charge on average per hour on any job to make sure we’re making 20% operating profit.” That now runs as a custom report at both agency and individual handler level.

The return

Increased profits, calmer working

“What it’s given me is much more confidence in the data,” Clare says. That confidence is changing decisions. “It’s improved decision making, because the quality of the data is there and the availability of the data is there.”

“We’ve got the personal dashboards set up now, showing the team how they’re performing against their success metrics: how their clients are doing against their revenue targets, how they’re doing against their revenue per hour, what they’ve got in their pipeline, what the utilisation rate is, all in one visible place. They love the fact that everything’s now at their fingertips.”

“We’re now able to see what we’re investing in each client over and above the delivery of projects, so we can make smarter decisions about where to invest our resources.”

It’s also helping the team catch problems sooner: “We’re better equipped to see within live jobs to spot any potential issues and budget overruns, to be able to influence them earlier rather than just looking at everything in retrospect.”

“It’s helped people be more accountable for their individual performance, and given us direct sight of agency-wide performance as well. It’s that decision making and accountability which are probably the key business impacts,” Clare says.