Case study / Marketing

Joining an agency's data into one dashboard

Sales, marketing, finance and operations figures pulled out of the separate tools they live in and joined into one dashboard, so the directors can see how the agency is doing without a single export.

Industry: Marketing and creative services
Used by: Directors and team leads
Our part: Advise, design, build and manage
Built with: A new CRM, an analytics platform, integrations
Status: Live, extended as the agency grows

01 / The industry

Agencies run on a patchwork of tools

Marketing agencies sell time and ideas. A typical agency's week runs across a CRM for new business, an email marketing platform, a project board for each client's work, a time tracker, a booking tool for calls and accounting software.

Each tool is good at its job and reports on itself. None of them answers the questions the directors actually ask: are we on target this month, which clients take more time than they pay for, is the pipeline big enough for next quarter, and does the team have room for more work?

02 / The problem

Every answer meant another export

The agency's numbers were spread across separate tools, and it had outgrown its old CRM. Answering a simple question meant exporting from several systems and stitching spreadsheets together, so it was done rarely, and the figures were argued over when it was.

The brief was to move sales onto a CRM that could connect to everything else, then bring the data from every system into one place:

sales, marketing, finance and operations on one dashboard;
figures that update on their own, with no exports;
the same definition of a lead, a sale and a month's revenue everywhere;
monthly targets set by the directors, shown against actual revenue.

03 / What we built

One dashboard, fed by every system

First, sales moved to a new CRM with a defined pipeline. Web forms, call bookings and proposal signing now feed it automatically, and the history came across from the old system. Then every other system was connected to a single analytics workspace.

Sales. Deals, conversion rates, forecast and won value, new leads, sales calls, and proposals sent and signed.
Marketing. Campaign emails sent, opened and clicked.
Finance. Bank balance, invoices raised this month, outstanding invoices, overdue bills and the value of the pipeline.
Operations. Tasks completed, team capacity, and time spent per client and per person.

As the agency's questions changed, the dashboard grew with them: key figures for the content team from their project boards, client review calls, and monthly targets against revenue.

04 / How it works

Joining data that was never meant to meet

Connectors first, code where needed. Systems with a ready-made connector feed the workspace directly. The rest, such as call records and time tracking, come through scheduled syncs and small functions we wrote.
One client, everywhere. Clients and deals are matched across the CRM, project boards, time tracker and accounts, so the time spent and the revenue earned line up against the same client.
Definitions agreed once. What counts as a lead, a won deal and a month's revenue is agreed with the directors and built into the data, so every chart follows the same rule.
Fixed at source. When a figure looks wrong, the fix goes into the process or the system it came from, not into the chart.

05 / Where it is now

Live, and growing with the agency

The dashboard has been in use for several years and has been extended each time the agency asked a new question. The approach is the same every time: get the data out of the tools it lives in, join it up, and show it in one place.

6+systems feeding one dashboard
4views: sales, marketing, finance and operations
3additions since launch, as the agency's questions changed
Monthlytargets set by the directors, tracked against revenue

06 / More work

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