We realised we'd lost quite a lot of visibility, so we decided to go back. It's as simple as that.
Why Altavia UK came back to Synergist
Altavia UK is a retail marketing and brand activation agency in Northampton, with a team of more than 140 people. Part of the wider Altavia Group, it delivers shopper marketing, brand communications and retail media work that gets retail brands noticed.
Altavia UK had used Synergist for years, but a group merger moved it onto a bespoke system instead, and job-level visibility went with it. Returning to Synergist means restoring the real-time control the agency had lost.
Agency type: Retail marketing and brand activation agency
Services: Shopper marketing, brand communications, retail media, creative and print production
Size: 140+ people
Location: Northampton, UK
Joe Ward
Managing Director at Altavia UK
The problem
Lost visibility and control
When Altavia UK became part of a wider group, the directive was to move onto the group's own bespoke system. That system didn't cover resource management or project management, so the team brought in a separate platform for resourcing, and some teams turned to Monday to track projects themselves.
“The tools weren't linked up,” says Vanessa Crow, People and Operations Director. “We weren't seeing end-to-end jobs, from the beginning through to production.” “We couldn't see a job level or even a collated view once things had happened. After the event you could see profitability detail, but we'd basically lost a lot of visibility about where we were making, or not making, money.”
Without one clear picture of job profitability and resourcing, both frontline teams and leadership lost the ability to make confident, timely decisions.
Finance felt the strain too: without an integrated system, revenue recognition that Synergist had automated became a manual monthly task. “When jobs run over several months, working out deferred and accrued revenue by hand was always a pain at month end,” says Joe Ward, Managing Director.
The solution
One system, built for agencies
Before recommitting, Altavia UK ran due diligence on alternatives, including Monday.com. “It's really good for managing projects,” Joe says, “but it's built for a different way of working to how we needed to run our business.”
The appetite to go back to Synergist was strong. “The strength of feeling was quite strong towards going back to Synergist,” Vanessa says. “For the teams, not having to go between tools so much is a big thing,” she adds. “As much as possible, it's all going to be visible within Synergist, rather than copying and pasting bits between systems that don't link up.”
Synergist itself had also moved on in the two years Altavia UK was away. “The developments of Synergist over the two years we'd been away had definitely improved things,” Joe says. That included revenue recognition: “When we went back to Synergist, we realised that was pretty much automated.”
What sealed it was a workshop with stakeholders from across the business, where Synergist's consultants presented the platform and worked through the team's questions. “Wherever anyone raised an objection, it was answered with a solution.” Joe says, “It was almost like one of those epiphanies that everyone gone, oh great, it does that. But what about this? Yeah, it does that.”
Joe has also been struck by how quickly the whole process has moved. “The Synergist team has been really good, and the support has been really good,” he says. “It also demonstrates the simplicity of the system: you can actually do a full implementation in eight weeks.”
You'll be able to have a single version of the truth. You'll be able to have greater control, and the teams will have greater visibility.”
Joe Ward
Managing Director at Altavia UK
The return
One place, sharper decisions
When asked about the return, Joe's first answer was “Staff happiness.” “Engagement, and therefore retention and overall team satisfaction, was a big factor in the change,” he says. Less time spent switching between systems and copying data, should free the team up for more valuable work.
“We'll get greater visibility on job profitability, which means teams will be far more accountable for making the right decisions at job level, and making sure client investment time is spent wisely,” Joe says. For Joe, scope creep and over-servicing are as much about client experience as they are about profit. “I don't think either of those are very good for clients in terms of what they experience,” he says. “So having a system that gives us total visibility of that should also improve client satisfaction.”
“Pipeline management will be a much easier thing to do, from a forecasting, financial and a resource planning perspective,” Joe says. “Our studio manager will see the opportunities in the same system as the finance team,” Vanessa says. “Everyone's looking in one place, and you can see the conversion of what's expected as it moves through.”
From a leadership perspective, visibility is what Altavia are most looking forward to having back. “Really being able to see where exactly we're making money and not making money,” she says. “And then it will be more conscious decisions around resource modelling and where we're putting the right people.”