Project Management Tools for Agencies: Maintain an Overview in Client Projects

1. These are the challenges of project management in agencies
2. How software supports you in project management in your agency
3. For project management in agencies, tools should meet certain requirements. While you can also use software without a specific agency focus, you may then miss important functions, which you have to cover with additional tools. To make your life easier and to make the project management in agencies more pleasant, there are
4. In the everyday life of an agency, it is essential that your
5. Rely on software that knows your pain points

Monday morning, you open your emails: "Can you adjust the font color in the visualizations?" And the next: "Is it possible to make the logo a little bigger? Will need the print files tomorrow." Via Slack you forward the customer requests to your colleagues in the design team. "Things are a bit tight here on time", comes back from them. And then you just barely remember the website-project deadline: Did the freelancer actually deliver her texts?

Agency project everyday life is not for the faint of heart. One deadline chases the next, budgets need to be calculated, capacities planned. This often takes place on many different stages: email, Slack or Microsoft Teams for communication, Excel or Google Sheets for calculations and capacity planning, important dates and deadlines in the calendar ... Hats off to anyone who retains an overview here.

What is somehow possible is not always the best choice. How nice would it be to take a simpler way than this jumble of tools and communication paths and to design agency project management as efficiently and above all as clearly as possible? We thought so too and therefore have tool tips for you on how to advance the project management in your agency. The times are over when you as a project manager have to handle change requests, queries and briefings in isolation and are the only person who knows what's going on.

These are the challenges of project management in agencies

Project management in agencies requires a lot of concentration and full flexibility. Numerous customer projects happen simultaneously, different teams need to be picked up (and sometimes caught) and there are strict deadlines to be kept. Project managers are the main interface between customers and creative teams, keeping all parties constantly up to date and ensuring realistic capacity planning.

As a project manager in an agency ...

• ... you keep an overview of parallel running customer projects - including status, deadlines and regular reports.
• ... you make sure that deadlines and project plans are met despite changes and spontaneous requests.
• ... you plan capacities as long-term as possible.
• ... you make sure that all project participants regularly track their times.
• ... you keep customers informed with detailed reports.
• ... you have feedback loops in sight and inform all teams about upcoming changes.
• ... you create convincing offers and invoice completed projects as quickly as possible.

This mountain of tasks is already not easy to cope with. And then there are the everyday challenges of project management in agencies on top of that: Thus, spontaneous orders and won pitches often make long-term capacity planning impossible. If your agency also relies on external support of freelancers, you have to take into account additional people in project updates and daily communication. Especially since they usually do not have access to internal records and your tools.

To be able to transmit interim statuses cleanly to customers, you must also ensure that your colleagues regularly pass on their working hours to you. And this is important not least for being able to realistically assess and plan further projects. It's just a shame that time tracking and documentation in agency software are not among creatives' favorite tasks. You probably had to chase colleagues because they hadn't entered any times into the project table for a long time. Annoying.

How software supports you in project management in your agency

How practical that there is a simple solution for all these struggles: Project Management Tools. If you rely on suitable software for project management in your agency, this not only makes your workday easier. Rather, project management tools help all involved teams to retain an overview of ongoing projects at all times. With such tools, you can make important information accessible to everyone and pass on change requests to the right people without forgetting anyone. Plus, you make sure that not only you know about important deadlines. This supports your daily business and facilitates handovers, for example in case of illness or when new colleagues take over the project management.

For tools to make the project management in your agency more pleasant, they should come with some functions:

• a clear overview of projects and tasks for all project participants
• resource planning both for detailed daily plans and for long-term gross planning
• an intuitive time recording
• the ability to quickly and easily create clear reportingthe
• integration of external participants (e.g. freelancers and customers) for smooth collaborationa simple
• exchange of information, project details and important contentthe
• integration with other agency toolsan
• attractive user interface, that is engagingWhen you rely on the right software for project management in your agency, you increase the efficiency of your projects in the long run.

This tool should be on your radar for project management in an agency

For project management in agencies, tools should meet certain requirements. While you can also use software without a specific agency focus, you may then miss important functions, which you have to cover with additional tools. To make your life easier and to make the project management in agencies more pleasant, there are

specific tools for agency everyday life. One of them is awork: With the tool made in Hamburg, project managers in agencies get a solution that supports them in the dynamic project everyday life and lets them keep an overview. awork puts special emphasis on an intuitive user interface, which is well received by both project managers and creative teams - so that everyone can pull together in project work.Creative teams quickly orientate themselves on the awork user interface. Graphic: awork

These features ensure

awork smooth workflows in agency project management:👉

Project management, capacity planning and time tracking go hand in hand at awork: The tool maps the three core functions of agency business in one place. So you benefit from easy multi-project planning, keep track of all deadlines, project progress and status.👉 With the

comprehensive capacity planning including integrated project plan and calendar, you have the team's workload in real time. This view incorporates both the times from project tasks and from the team members' calendars. So nothing gets past you and you can avoid overbooking. The integrated calendar also shows you where there is room for spontaneous requests. This means your agency won't lose any possible revenue because of misconceptions and your colleagues can simultaneously make fewer worries about overload.awork offers calendar integrations to help you keep track of capacities as a project manager. Graphic: awork

👉

Time recording has long been old hat in many agencies. After all, even before the obligation to document working hours, everything in the project business revolved around how long teams were active for their customers. However, tracking these times with a tool and then manually entering them into not very appealing tables is a nuisance for many employees and is often procrastinated. So you don't have to chase your colleagues anymore, they can conveniently track their project and task times using a start-stop timer directly in awork - and thus at the place where everything important is regulated anyway.👉 Using these

real-time information you can quickly and easily create meaningful reports in awork. So customers are always up to date and you don't have to laboriously search all data together.👉 Your team is fully engaged and needs support from freelancers? With awork, you can also

invite external project participants, customers or partner agencies to projects and work on tasks with them.👉 To make feedback processes clearer and more comfortable for everyone, you can also

place comments directly at the appropriate place with awork and assign them to the respective colleagues. They can then prioritize feedback and work it off calmly without confusion.👉

Automations help you plan projects and their tasks in awork more efficiently and sensibly. This way you can focus on content instead of spending a lot of time checking off and assigning tasks.awork

is a project management tool specifically for the dynamic everyday life in agencies. The software provider relies on an attractive user interface, that also appeals to creative people with particularly high design expectations. European server locations also ensure GDPR compliance. This is essential for project business for customers with high security requirements. So that awork fits seamlessly into your existing tech stack, you can also connect it with numerous tools, e.g. Slack, Personio, Google Drive or Lexoffice.With awork, your team keeps an eye on important deadlines. Graphic: awork

That's why project management in agencies need specific tools for the creative everyday life

In the everyday life of an agency, it is essential that your

tools are tailored to the requirements of project work. Processes such as quotation creation, invoicing and project time recording can also be done with ERP systems or specific agency software. However, they offer few functions for efficient and effective collaboration. Those who have already worked with such software for project management in agencies will probably know that the correct time recording by creative teams often only occurs here with a grumble.

To keep all teams in the loop during the project day, many agencies therefore also use project management tools like ClickUp or Trello. They offer countless features and are suitable for a wide variety of industries and requirements. However, their lack of focus on specific fields of activity often makes the start with such project management tools complicated and overwhelming: Finding the suitable functions for one's own agency in the first place and if necessary defining individual work processes, requires a lot of time and a deep understanding of the software. This costs time, which is often lacking in agencies. To make such project management tools meet the demands of your agency, you often have to add more (paid) add-ons, be it for time tracking or to keep costs in view. So you can find yourself in a confusing interplay of tools and add-ons, which need to be understood and managed.

Rely on software that knows your pain points

In agency project management, it is often about speed and especially a lot of flexibility. For you as a project manager, this means everyday juggling customer wishes and team sensitivities. So that you can perform the balancing act between what customers want (bigger logos) and what is sensible and possible (usually no bigger logos), without breaking down, you should instead be supported by the right tools. These are tools that understand you as a project manager in an agency, who know your pain points and know what is important for you and your teams.

To the special requirements of creative teams and their project managers, tool providers like awork have found an answer. Their softwares provide all the features you need for a clean project management in your agency. They help you to catch your creative colleagues, motivate them and ensure smooth project workflows. Without orga-struggles and opaque feedback loops.

Would you like to know how awork can improve your project management? kreativkarussell, thjnk and Content Fleet, like many other companies and service providers, are already using the tool and reveal how awork for agencies is used in their operations.