There has never been a greater need for collaboration within advertising agencies than right now. Therefore, job definitions must be laid out plainly, and staff members know exactly what their roles are. So, collaboration is key when work colleagues have, in some cases, not seen each other for over a year.
For clients looking in, agencies can sometimes seem like a group of specialists working entirely autonomously. This means, of course, that they never seem to see the whole picture, just fragmented areas. It is, of course, vital to keep areas of expertise within your workforce. However, by adopting a more holistic approach, aspects of their specialization can more easily be shared.
The challenge for today’s agencies is to be able to act as one unit while retaining the specialists within their own departments. Effective collaboration and shared responsibilities will achieved this.
The 7 Reasons Why Collaboration is Key
1: It Creates a Stronger Brand Identity
Team spirit is enhanced when everyone within your organization is working together and collaborating fully. This feeling of striving towards a deadline is contagious. People get swept up in the moment. When this happens, it is impossible not to be promoting the brand image better. Staff members work harder and show great pride in their work. So naturally, your agency is the winner, every time.
2: Work becomes Much More Enjoyable
Ask anyone who’s been working from home these last 18 months. They will tell you that the main thing they miss is the company of colleagues. We are sociable creatures; we crave company. However, remote working does not have to be a completely solitary experience. With Zoom and Teams meetings, staff can still collaborate fully. The feeling of belonging to a team is maintained. So collaboration is key for retaining staff contentment. Being in the loop and collaborating fully is simply more fun. A survey by McKinsey & Company found that more than 20% of the workforce could work remotely 3 – 5 days a week as effectively as they could if working full-time from an office.
3: Purchasing Becomes Better Focused
Purchasing the correct software for a company is one of the main spending decisions that agencies have to make. If your team is collaborating well, they act as a focus group for what is needed. A major failure is when an agency buys software then finds out later that it is wholly inappropriate for one or more departments. This is where Tangram can advise. We represent the best of the best. Working with clients and teams we collaborate fully to ensure agencies get what they need.
4: Collaboration is Key for Swifter Processes
The time between the first contact to billing will become shorter. With your teams collaborating well, you recognize different perspectives quicker. This enables the whole process to speed up. Having a group of people tackle a problem is always going to speed up the process. A perfect example of this has been the development of Covid Vaccines. With hundreds of thousands of people collaborating towards a common goal, the results have been miraculous.
5: Sharing Knowledge Benefits All
The human race develops because of shared learning. Children today do not start from the same point as children did 100 years ago. So many things are learned simply by osmosis. Any 10-year-old nowadays will be more tech-savvy than most 70-year-olds. It’s the same in any business. Collective ideas help everyone. The better informed an agency, the better its staff will work. Collaboration radically increases the abilities of each team member while at the same time improves the whole company.
6: It Makes Agencies Sell Better
Using collaboration is key as your motto will enable you to sell better and be better at what you sell. As you trust your teams to collaborate, the level of information improves. Your staff learns more about the products you are offering, and the whole process becomes more efficient. When clients start to receive better solutions than they expected or even asked for, then your agency starts to fly. Once you develop that lead over the competition, growth becomes exponential. Forbes, quoting a Stanford study, found that workers who collaborate stick at tasks 64% longer than those who don’t.
7: Collaboration is Key for Resilience
Agencies will discover that as their teams collaborate more, they become experienced beyond traditional expectations. Excellence is contagious. Team leaders pick up skills from their contemporaries which will enable them to stand in for them if they are, for example, sick. With the use of great cloud-based software, this becomes more and more the case. Your team members will learn many different roles and will begin to take on more responsibilities. The resilience that this builds within an agency is priceless.
Summary
Once agencies switch on to the idea that collaboration is key, the rest will start to slot into place nicely. The next step is to create a collaborative environment.. You can achieve this by setting collaborative strategies and implementing tactical solutions like selecting the best project management software. Utilizing the correct software will cut down on emails and create a more conversational approach among staff. This may then be used later for knowledge sharing; therefore dramatically saving the amount of time necessary for completing the process.
