Operational Excellence
Overview & Challenge(s):
Crux KC was a young, rapidly growing agency with over 100% YoY growth, causing teams to work in solos with no stated, repeatable, or scalable processes. In short, the lack of rigor and collaboration between teams caused delays in client deliverables, a lack of consistent data to measure the impacts, rework, and generally dissatisfied employees.
The organization was structured to support the account teams using a shared service model that includes digital marketing, operations, and creative services, all loosely defined. Because of the model, the impacts on the agency were many:
Client overservicing
Burned-out team members
Scope agreements unfavorable to the agency
Lost revenue/revenue left on the table
Rogue processes that degraded profitability
Lack of clear direction and accountability
Inexperienced staff with little to no prior agency or marketing experience
Goal(s):
Implement processes and policies, improve data capture, establish governance and metrics, and develop training to increase agency profitability.
Strategy & Approach:
First 30 days:
Job shadow each team to capture ways of working and team dependencies.
Create a visual diagram of the existing tech stack and how data did/did not flow between systems.
Understand the billable team process for inputting data to the CRM (Function Point).
Determine workflow opportunities.
Discover and evaluate each team's pain points.
30-60 days:
Lead the team to provide POVs for addressing the issues found.
Identify the most influential SMEs from each team and build an "Ops Team Insider" task force to be led by the project manager.
Conduct collaborative, off-site discussions with the task force to create the current state and proposed crawl, walk, run approach.
Work hands-on alongside my team to foster cross-functional collaboration, knowledge sharing, and a visual diagram of how work intersected.
Develop the go-forward recommendations for presentation to the Executive Leadership Team using a crawl-walk-run approach, incorporating newly established performance goals and metrics.
60+ days:
Received approval to allocate non-billable time for the task force team and co-led efforts with the Project Manager.
Led team to create the implementation plan, training, metrics, and policy playbook.
Tested and rolled plan out, stepping aside for the task force team the spotlight and presenting it to the entire company.
Results:
Improved collaboration to 100% across teams, resulting in the launch of over 10 process improvements within the first 30 days.
Increased data capture amongst billable teams by 77% within three months and improved accuracy to 100%.
Analyzed the CRM data to create realistic client estimates, improving accuracy by 75% and decreasing the over-servicing of clients by more than 25%.
Created end-to-end process document visualizing workflows and dependencies between functional areas.
Conducted "train the trainer" sessions to successfully deploy new marketing policies in one week.
Implemented 10 process improvements within the first 60 days that increased profits by 20%.
Improved project turnaround and client response times by 80%, creating a 20% improvement in client and employee satisfaction.
Established Operation Team metrics and shared in weekly state-of-the-business updates.
Gained the trust of all internal teams and was requested to consult on client strategies and deliverables going forward.