Author: Accountability Team

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Customer Stories

A creative company COO describes how an integrated financial management platform fuels its business planning

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The Customer

Emotive is an independent creative company making ideas that live within advertising, entertainment and design. Part ad agency, part production company, part content distributor, Emotive is deliberately (un)structured to respond to clients’ business issues or opportunities effectively, rather than default to ‘traditional comms’ as the answer. 

Ben Keep, Chief Operating Officer of Emotive, is responsible for financial management, operations, and legal. In this exclusive “Accountability Customer Spotlight” series, he shares how he evolved his agency into a connected operation. 

The Challenge

Disparate systems, disparate data

We were using three different systems across finance, time, and job costing, some of which were manual-based and labour-intensive.  

  • Our most important requirement is integrating all data points – to have one single source of truth. To get a clear picture of a job’s financial performance was not simply the click of a button – it should be. 
  • With disparate systems, the team could not view the information they wanted on a timely and accurate basis for themselves.
  • Double handling of data 
  • Too much reliance on the finance team to issue Estimates instead of being managed by the broader team

Expectations from a new system

My holy grail was a system that encompassed timesheets, expense claims, job costing and financial management in the one system that was accessible beyond the finance team. Secondly, it needed to be a cloud-based solution to provide remote access and ensure data backup and integrity.  

The Solution

An integrated financial management platform

I searched the market far and wide for what I thought was the best system. We came close to implementing another system, but we halted it just before going live because there were too many compromises to make. We went back to the drawing board – then we found Accountability.

With Accountability, we operate with one single source of truth. Our weekly meeting is driven by the insights we get from the platform. 

Flexible and intuitive 

Accountability is designed specifically for agencies, so the flexibility the system provides is second to none. From WIP management to deferring and accruing revenue, it is by far the most robust system I’ve seen on the market. 

Ease of navigation was a big one for me. Before committing to Accountability, I trialed a demo version and successfully completed all of the basic accounting requirements without any training or introduction to the system. Very intuitive.  

Seamless implementation with expert advice

My two biggest concerns were: 

  1. Ensuring the system was set up as I wanted, i.e., it was important for my implementation partner to understand my needs to configure the platform accordingly.
  2. Buy-in from the broader team.

The significant advantage of Accountability is that both David and Michael have been CFOs in agency land. They understood not only the accounting requirements but the commercial and agency nuances as well. In previous system implementations, I’ve worked with consultants who are not from a finance background.

The Accountability team understood and enhanced business processes with a wealth of knowledge. 

True partnership

The system requires very little support, but on occasions when support is needed, the responses have been timely and ensure no interruption to the business. The most significant benefit is that we have access to the person who managed the implementation and is familiar with our structure and workflow. Our partnership with Accountability started from the moment we kicked-off onboarding and they continue to be an extension of our agency. 

The Outcome

We’ve seen notable improvements in multiple areas: 

  • Management of project budgets – visibility is clear and in the one system. 
  • Timesheet management – it’s an easy system to use and as such, no longer an issue for staff to complete
  • Management of small jobs often can be overlooked, but the system ensures we’re able to estimate and track jobs significantly better than we could with the use of our disparate systems. 

From day to day to more strategic outlooks, our whole business planning is powered by Accountability.

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Customer Stories

Remote work imposed by COVID-19 restrictions improved data entry for a multi-national design agency

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The global pandemic has forever changed the way we work. It challenged legacy processes and accelerated automation initiatives across industries. The advertising and marketing vertical was not exempt from the financial and social impact of this unprecedented event. We are witness to agencies adapting to this change.  

Spotlight on Cowan

Cowan is an international brand innovation, strategy and packaging design agency specializing in Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) packaging, with established offices in Melbourne, Sydney, Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing, Vietnam, and London.  

We spoke with Samantha Gill, Cowan’s Finance Manager, who has worked in agency finance for over 25 years. For Samantha, having a financial management platform that serves as the backbone of her agency’s financial operations is fundamental.

Accountability:  You’ve been in agency finance for a long time. What has been your biggest challenge? 

Samantha:  Training and getting the staff on board to maintain accurate and timely information. Enforcing best practices and having a good platform is critical to achieving this. 

Accountability:  What do you expect from a financial management platform? 

Samantha:  We’re a global company with localized needs in each market, so we need our main group platform to be multi-entity and multi-currency. We have always had a distributed team with offices across seven markets, but with all of us working remotely due to COVID, having a cloud-based platform accessible from anywhere is vital. We also need it to be intuitive and reliable. 

Accountability:  What process changes have you implemented that have made a dramatic impact on your agency?

Samantha:  We are all working remotely because of COVID-19 restrictions and we actually improved our data entry. Using the Expense claim and Supplier invoice routines in Accountability converted Cowan into a paperless office that we only dreamt about previously. It’s great for our environment and allows for easy information retrieval and sharing. 

Accountability:  How can we support you during this time? 

Samantha: We receive exceptional support from Accountability, going above and beyond with quick responses, even to low priority queries. We can speak directly to a member of the team or submit low priority requests from within the platform. Accountability has also undertaken bespoke development for Cowan. The team worked closely with us to produce reporting required for daily forecasting, CRM and financial statements directly from the system, allowing our teams across the globe to generate daily reporting instantly. The system is valuable to all members of the staff, not just the finance teams. 

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News

Accountability Launches Executive Dashboard for Real-Time KPI Monitoring

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November 10, 2020 – Accountability, a leading financial management platform for marketing and advertising agencies, launched an interactive dashboard for agency financial leaders to assess their company’s financial position. 

The global pandemic brought a new level of scrutiny on the agency and its operations. Anyone at the agency with financial responsibilities demands real-time access to consolidated data to inform decisions on project costing and resourcing.

All ERP systems have reporting capabilities that promise to give agencies visibility into profitability and revenue, but many of these platforms were not built for professional services and more imporantly, the marketing and advertising vertical. This means that onerous tasks specific to running an agency project are still managed in disparate places. “Accountability is specifically for this vertical and serves as the foundation for an agency’s financial operations, ” said Terry McMillan, CEO and Founder of Accountability. ” This is a crucial differentiator for our dashboard because the agency CFO can drill down into specific transactions without leaving our platform. “

This product launch features a redesigned version of Accountability’s dashboard, which gives the agency CFO an on-demand view of its financial position. “Instead of using a third-party visualization package, we built a tile-based dashboard structure that is completely customizable for each user of the platform. We have all of the transactions in our platform to easily show different dissections of data for the agency, including Job WIP Balances and WIP Aging. This launch includes pre-determined charts across different categories — Balance Sheet, Profit and Loss, Revenue, Jobs, Resources, and Time. Agencies can also create custom charts for Balance Sheet data and publish predefined dashboards for different teams within the organization. They’ll be able to create custom charts for the other categories in subsequent releases.”

The Accountability platform was designed by former agency CFOs to address the agency’s nuanced needs.  “We built what we wish we had when we were agency CFOs,” said Terry  McMillan who’s also the platform’s Chief Architect. “It gives the financial leader at the agency a holistic view of the business so that all decisions are data-informed. More importantly, KPIs can be dissected at various levels down to the actual agency job, so it holds the entire agency accountable and more connected.” Ben Keep, Chief Operating Officer of creative agency, Emotive is an early adopter of the redesigned dashboard. “My role requires me to have an accurate and up-to-date view of how my agency is operating.  The insight I can extract from Accountability’s dashboard informs my decision-making and quickly identifies areas of the business that I need to prioritize. “ Terry McMillan adds, “It’s a big time-saver.  Anyone with access can create an ad hoc dashboard for their leadership or board meeting and publish it to attendees beforehand instead of spending hours putting together a deck and taking up valuable time walking through slides. We use the Accountability platform and dashboard ourselves and our board meetings are 50% shorter but 2x more effective. What’s great is that if anyone has a question about the numbers, they can get to the transaction that makes up that number without leaving the platform.”

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Customer Stories

Experiential agency combines human connection and workflow automation to gain competitive advantage

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The Customer

Founded in 2003 by Maneesh K. Goyal, MKG is an experiential marketing, social media & branding agency that leverages human connection to impact consumers and influencers in smart, meaningful ways. 

With offices in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, MKG is an independent, award-winning agency comprised of creative trailblazers that partner with some of the world’s premier brands including Delta Air Lines, Audi, Heineken and NBCUniversal. 

MKG’s specialties are Experiential Marketing, Event Planning, Digital Integration + Social Media Marketing, Sponsorship Strategy & Activation 

The Challenge 

Prior to implementing Accountability in early 2013, MKG did not have an integrated solution. The size, duration and complexity of client projects presented large challenges in project financial management and accounting.

One specific challenge was to develop a solution to better manage the large number of corporate credit card transactions MKG has to deal with as a result of project managers booking vendor costs. 

The Solution

MKG considered a number of potential solutions and ultimately chose Accountability.

After a detailed needs assessment to understand MKG’s specific challenges, the decision was taken to commence the implementation of AccountAbility in January 2013

Accountability developed a function to automate and streamline the management of corporate credit card transactions.

The Outcome

Accounting + project management seamlessly tied together:

“As all we need to access Accountability is a web browser, it makes problem solving on the go easy and painless. Accountability provides us with an all-in-one solution that just doesn’t exist in the marketplace.”

Chris Jeffery, MKG Finance Director
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Customer Stories

An integrated financial management platform helps agency executives plan for the future with confidence

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The Customer

Grayling is the world’s 2nd largest independent PR agency. A global communications network founded in 1981, it delivers data-driven strategies for Public Relations, Government Affairs, Investor Relations and Event Management. Grayling operates from 54 offices in 26 countries worldwide across Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia. Grayling has an enormous international reach and provides fully integrated communications across every major market. 

The Challenge 

A global, multi-office agency ERP implementation. Not only was the rollout truly international – 26 countries and over 700 users – but there were limited resources and a very quick turnaround to get our solution integrated. 

Grayling’s mandate for a global system required:

  • fast, accurate globally consolidated data with consistent profit and loss, profitability, job, time & resourcing reporting
  • ability to track global client revenues in real time, providing a single source of truth ​
  • Timely and cost effective deployment through largely self managed implementation and training

The Solution

Accountability acted as an extension of the Grayling team to drive the development needed for Grayling’s operations that were using disparate systems across multiple regions. Most legacy systems had specific compliance and operational demands, so we ensured these were integrated without losing their functional requirements.

“Given the users were spread over 26 countries with multiple languages, we developed a self-managed implementation and training process so the entire Grayling workforce was ready to use the platform once the setup was complete.”

David Guthrie, Accountability Chief Customer Officer

The Results

“We’ve become so used to dealing with multiple systems that it was hard to imagine how big an impact a centralised, integrated solution would have. So far, we’ve had great early success across all regions with Accountability’s implementation.” 

James Holland, Grayling Global CFO

Accountability gave Grayling a true consolidated reporting system. This has been crucial when providing financial information to its parent company Huntsworth PLC. More importantly, it has also given Grayling executives more confidence when planning for the future.

“Having a complete company overview is vital for a global agency like ours. It means we know exactly what’s happening all the time, across all markets. That definitely makes decision making a lot easier.”

James Holland, Grayling Global CFO
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Customer Stories

Agency transforms its multi-market operation into a scalable global business

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The Customer

Cowan  is an international brand and packaging design agency, specializing in the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) packaging, with established offices in Melbourne, Sydney, Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing, Vietnam, Hong Kong and London. 

The Challenge 

Cowan was running separate finance and production systems for each office across Melbourne, Sydney, Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing, Vietnam, Hong Kong and London.  This resulted in operational inefficiencies and lack of financial visibility across the organization: 

  • Duplicate data entry across production and accounting systems
  • Minimal visibility of detailed foreign activity
  • Manual consolidation of group results on a monthly basis
  • Inefficiencies in the recording of related party transactions
  • Group forecasts managed in Excel was error-prone
  • Minimal job profitability analysis 

The Solution

In 2013, Cowan centralized its financial management workflow within the Accountability platform, integrating its production and accounting operations globally.

Cowan required a system that was capable of linking multiple local and global offices in one database and a partner that understood the added complexity of a multi-country operation. Accountability was implemented to ensure that local accounting requirements were met while making it very easy to transact with related entities. 

Working with Accountability to implement the system was achieved through a smooth transition with outstanding training and ongoing support to all Cowan staff. They always provide prompt support and are keen to work with us to answer any queries

Mina Lekkas, Financial Controller

The Results

Cowan gained significant benefits from centralizing its financial operations within the Accountability platform:

  • Greater capacity to analyse job profitability at various stages of a project
  • Standardised processes and procedures across the Group to ensure operation and financial consistency
  • Tools to provide the Group with streamlined budgeting, forecasting and reporting processes
  • The ability to transact in numerous currencies
  • Increased efficiency and a reduced headcount in our finance division

The success of the Cowan implementation has largely been as a result of a successful working relationship between Accountability and Cowan.

Mina Lekkas, Financial Controller