Qualiant Agency Software

Quiet recently I had a video call with the owner of a 200-person agency in Kazakhstan. He had booked a zoom meeting with me through Calendly after finding me on LinkedIn. His name was Dmitri. He runs a 200-person agency in Kazakhstan, with a branch office in Warsaw. When the camera turned on, he wasn't sitting in an office. He was in the back seat of his limousine, driving through Almaty, working through the meetings in his calendar between appointments. I have to admit - that wasn't what I expected. At first, I assumed he contacted me because he was looking for agency software. He wasn't. We spent the conversation talking about how agencies work in different markets, how they organise their business and where he sees the industry heading. I learned that their setup is completely different from the agencies we typically work with. He learned a bit about the challenges we see across Europe. Nobody sold anything. Nobody bought anything. And yet it was one of the most interesting conversations I've had in weeks. Twenty years ago, this conversation probably wouldn't have happened. Today, a Managing Partner in Vienna and an agency owner in Almaty can exchange ideas over coffee without ever having met before. That's one of the things I genuinely enjoy about our industry. The agency world is much bigger than our local markets. And at the same time, it has never felt smaller.

Romanian agencies are becoming increasingly sophisticated when it comes to controlling profitability and operations. GRF+ is a great example. Many agencies face the same challenge: a lot of work gets done, yet actual utilization, profitability, and capacity planning often remain a black box. GRF+ Romania wanted to change that. That’s why the team decided to implement LEADING Job - with the goal of creating greater transparency across projects, resources, and business performance metrics. In our latest case study, they openly share their experience, the challenges they encountered during implementation, and the tangible results they are seeing in their day-to-day operations today. A valuable read for agencies looking to make better decisions based on reliable data and real-time insights. 👉 https://lnkd.in/dxFvJFx4 A big thank you to Irina Ciocan Stanescu, CEO of GRF+, Elena Stefan, Operations Director of GRF+, Alexandru Jac, and the entire @GRF+ Romania team for their trust, collaboration, and openness in sharing their journey.

Romania is a good example of why agency operations are becoming more complex, not less. A recent Expert Forum analysis shows that social platforms like Facebook, TikTok and YouTube are important channels for information. But when Romanians are asked which sources they trust, television still plays a central role. So this is not simply a story about digital replacing traditional media. Both exist at the same time. And for agencies, that leads to a very practical consequence: different channels mean different, but especially: more briefs, suppliers, cost estimates, approvals, internal hours and billing models. Therefore the complexity does not only grow in the media plan. It grows behind the scenes. You can still manage every single project somehow. But the harder question is whether management can still see what was estimated, what was actually spent, what can be billed and where margins are moving. Adding another spreadsheet may solve one small problem for now. But it rarely contributes to a clearer view of the whole business. Actually, rather the opposite. The question is no longer which channel will win. It is how your agency operations copy with the challenge of handling them all at once. Where is your single source of truth where you can see the profitability across those campaigns today without manually combining data? Interesting recent data on media consumption in Romania from Expert Forum: https://lnkd.in/dCsMzg-N

Agentur-Entscheider: Zufrieden mit Ihrer Software oder nur daran gewöhnt? Am Anfang fallen die kleinen Dinge noch auf. Der umständliche Workflow. Immer gleich Zusatzkosten für Support und Kleinigkeiten. Der Workaround, den inzwischen jeder kennt. Irgendwann gehört das einfach zum Alltag. Und aus „Das müssten wir ändern“ wird „Es läuft ja noch“. Die spannendere Frage ist deshalb nicht, ob Ihre Agentursoftware funktioniert. Sondern ob Sie sie heute noch einmal auswählen würden. Vielleicht lohnt sich genau dieser Vergleich.👇

Influencer marketing is growing fast in Warsaw, Prague & Bucharest. But does playing on more channels lead to more profit? Working with influencers is attractive but quite hard to manage. Due to a lot of different partners, frequent changes in linear planning like in a classic campaign is impossible. Therefore the original campaign quite differs from the one executed at the end. It is harder for agencies to manage traditional media, online video and influencer projects at the same time. The issue is no longer just project management. It is the connection between the brief, the cost estimate, external supplier costs, internal effort and the final invoice. Still, management needs answers like: Did we make money on this project? A good system tracks cost and profitability throughout the life-cycle of a campaign. During the campaign, and not only post mortem. Does your current tool-set support you before the project is already over?

Agency software implementation is not an IT project. It is a management project with IT involved, less today than in the past You can delegate an ERP implementation to an operations person, an experienced project lead or even an external consultant. Still, you cannot delegate management responsibility for it. That distinction matters more than many companies think. But if management delegates the implementation and then mentally leaves the room, the project’s success is at risk. During the implementation decisions need to be made, processes need to be clarified and people’s responsibilities need to be reviewed and defined. Only a well organised implementation plan will define very few points in time, where management needs to be available and take decisions. After that, management is free to go on doing other things. Would the person responsible for your next implementation get fast answers from management?