Keeping agency finance teams working hard is easy, but working smart isn’t. You could have the best product and service team known to man. If you don’t build this on sound process, use systems that automate as much as possible, there is a chance you’ll be missing a trick or two.
Getting access to data in a timely fashion can only be a good thing. Providing sufficient clarity to help you make smart decisions puts you in control, while eliminating unnecessary human intervention will cut out errors and increase the value of your finance team. They’ll start supporting you establishing ways to charge clients appropriately while managing process and delivery changes as volume rises.
Traditional agency billing processes and financial management are well established. Little has changed to the way these are handled, but the skills aren’t automatically transferable to digital and the burden on the finance department is much greater. There are many more suppliers, a variety of deals to base payment on and no standardisation of their payment terms. You don’t want to over-pay suppliers or under-bill clients.
Reform’s time running digital and traditional media businesses means we can interrogate, advise and train teams on everything they need to know, including:
- management accounts processes and software
- statutory, investor and board reporting
- financial workflow processes, such as payment, billing and reporting
- business forecasting
- income recognition
- business key performance indicators
- time reporting