Silver lining in adversity: a golden opportunity for change
Thanks to lock down I lost the need to commute to London. This gave me 4 hours back a day. Woohoo…. but it also stopped 90% of my work.
Once I’d picked myself up off the floor it was time to really rethink what I wanted to do. Where do I get my buzz from?
Simple : Agency Life + Making a difference.
- By Claire Halsey
- October 20, 2020
Thanks to lock down I lost the need to commute to London. This gave me 4 hours back a day. Woohoo…. but it also stopped 90% of my work.
Once I’d picked myself up off the floor it was time to really rethink what I wanted to do. Where do I get my buzz from?
Simple : Agency Life + Making a difference.
Time to view things differently
The fast-paced environment and its constant change and the people (clients and my agency teams) is what has made the last few decades of my life have purpose. I am a suit through and through.
The tsunami impact of COVID on the agency world is still hard to comprehend. But you know, where there is adversity, opportunity shines through. It was time to reframe things; time to look at things through a new lens.
Why do we not always seek out solutions?
Lunch (COVID-safe of course) with an old acquaintance got me thinking. There is so much willingness in agencies to transform and take forward what works and toss out what doesn’t in almost every area – apart from scoping and estimating. In this area we are still in the dark ages: still doing everything on spreadsheets and email. Nothing connected. Invisible errors that let sales income slip away … and the manual rework. Wow, now I think about it, I can’t believe we put up with it. The hours I spent (in addition to the day job!) entering and transposing data from one sheet to another just to understand what business we were doing and what capacity we had. Its beyond belief.
Why did we not seek a solution?
Game changer
These ruminations have led me to now working with Scope – the software platform from The Virtu Group that is saving agencies and advertisers cost and time by reworking the way we scope and price for the work that creative and marketing services agencies do. Check them out at www.scopebetter.com
Scope is the tool I wish I had had when I was working in the agency world. Being able to access a SaaS tool to pull together estimates and manage clients’ budgets would have been amazing. Like many I only had Excel. Don’t get me wrong it worked, but it was always a ball’s ache to do and the risk of a formula not being right a nightmare and often my FD’s had to review them. Not really the job of an FD. But essential when there is no other way to build a ratecard or estimate. Until now.
Scope is game changing. Not only for agency operations but for agency-client relations – it’s about lifting the game for both parties. At its heart is deliverable-based scoping and pricing because this model gives the client something tangible – they can see what they are paying for. And for agencies, it helps ring fence what is being bought and saves time and errors pulling estimates and scopes together. Time that isn’t paid for.
I am thrilled that I am part of a product team that I feel is making a real difference and I can pull on my years of experience to ensure we deliver the right solution for each of our clients.
So, I definitely see a silver lining from the adversity caused by the pandemic. Golden opportunities for change rise to the surface, and this is exactly what I – together with the team at Scope – look to achieve.
Claire Halsey has joined The Virtu Group team with more than 25 years’ experience working in Agencies with top tier Advertisers and brands She will be working as a specialist consultant on our new business team. She will help the Scope team to win over more large network agencies and increase the collaboration and success of Advertisers using the scope platform. www.scopebetter.com
Keep Reading :
The Top three reasons I moved from agency life to a tech SaaS platform. And why you should consider it now too.
“…I bring a unique skill set, a different perspective, industry experience, passion and the belief
Rolling out a new system in your agency? Make it a shared implementation.
At Scope we trust in a shared implementation methodology. This is why. Having worked for a few tech businesses, the first back in 2005 and more recently, fast forward 15 years, to working at Scope
Oliver’s Jason Bailis in a fireside chat with our CEO Tracey Shirtcliff
Jason talking to us about the value of Scope’s deliverable-based benchmark data to Oliver.
Scope is 4 years in the making. It’s based on the number one premise that Excel and Word are not tools to manage global scope of work. That there is a better way. Armed with the want of a better way and driving a better more joined up process between advertisers and agencies- Scope was born.
