It isn’t easy to keep clients and stakeholders happy. It is even more difficult to deliver a great project that satisfies clients and stakeholders.
Here are four ways a company/agency can shift its focus from a project-first approach to a client-first one.
Automated and cohesive operations
Agency operations are key to shifting the focus from a project-first approach to a client-first one. Automating these operations is the key to success.
Consider this example: The company’s internal operations are not coordinated, and projects are poorly scoped. People are also working overtime, and there is little communication between
The key takeaway
If you have disjointed operations, your agency may still be client-first and not project-first. To shift to a client-first mindset, you must work closely with your client to estimate the project’s scope accurately.
Each member of the team knows who they are working alongside.
This second approach is easier to use than the project-first approach. Collaboration is key, both with clients and internally. Why is team collaboration so important? Simply because your team members are the backbone of your project’s success.
Accurate reporting is what makes the difference.
It is exhausting to look at five different places to find one metric. The metric may not be accurate. Similar to disjointed operations that cause the client-first focus to be placed on the project rather than the project-first, inaccurate reports can also occur.
A connected management system verifies real agency data and provides transparent and detailed business insights.
One platform provides one source of truth for project operations, time management and task management. You can be proactive and not reactive by seeing what’s not going according to plan.
Your secret weapon
Artificial Intelligence (AI) will help you work more efficiently. Why? Simply because AI allows you to spot potential delays or deviations in projects. An AI-enabled project management platform can handle tedious and manual project work.
It is easy for team members to log their time to tasks or suggested time entries. This makes it easier to get work done. Your agency will also have more detailed reports about where and when the time was spent on projects.
Takeaway
Client-first means you can spend more time optimizing your projects and not just executing them.
Having a platform that has everything connected – from team collaboration, project planning, budget planning, forecasting, resource scheduling, capacity management, and task management – will provide your agency with the means to focus on client relations with every operation that is taken care of.
