The Ultimate Agency Tech Stack

Growth & Tooling

Sub-10 FTEs

As agencies grow, their tool needs evolve.

Some of this evolution is driven by increasing sophistication levels. As shops get bigger, their processes and procedures tend to become more intricate. Tools that solve a singular challenge for a small shop might not be able to handle the nuanced challenges of a larger agency.

Another significant driver of evolving tool needs is knowledge storage and transfer.

When a shop is small, <10 full-time employees (FTEs), it’s easy for everyone on the team to engage in 1:1 communication about revgen, production, or support-related topics. Most of the information that exists within the agency is housed within the individuals who work there.

Beyond 10 FTEs

Once agencies grow past about 10 FTEs, this all changes. Their internal communication abilities become dramatically more complex, employee turnover weighs on internal knowledge, so it needs a place to live more permanently, and leadership requires more detailed metrics to manage the health and growth of the agency.

As agencies grow even further, knowing what and where information exists becomes increasingly difficult. Simply evaluating the lines of communication that exist at small agencies vs. large agencies illustrates this challenge. Proper tools help agencies create, store, and transfer knowledge; good ones will scale as the agency grows.

Agency Metrics & Where to Find Them

The metrics section is a place where we see a lot of differentiation between agencies that are executing on a higher level and those that are struggling. In our strategy work, we have a Request For Information form that we send over at the beginning of the engagement. This form asks for many items relevant to crafting a strategy and a decent number of them are around metrics. The high-performing agencies can easily provide all the base metrics and more. Those that are struggling either take a while to find the metrics or don’t have access to that kind of data at all. If data about your agency’s health is difficult to come by, it makes it impossible to quickly adapt to changing conditions like recessions, pandemics, the advent of AI, etc. Quality tools give you greater visibility into your agency’s metrics.

Beyond metrics, good tools also facilitate necessary agency motions better than others. We see this reflected in their popularity both in our surveys and on software review sites. Tools exist to make life easier. Your team shouldn’t be fighting them.

The goal of this guide is to narrow down the vast list of tools that are available to the ones that we’ve seen make real differences at digital agencies.

All-In-One Agency Management

AIO Agency Management

We won’t bury the lead; an all-in-one (AIO) agency management software solution is the right call for almost every agency above 10 FTEs. The ease of having everything in one place unlocks the ability to use your agency’s data to make better decisions across the board.

All-in-one agency management solutions offer significant advantages over piecing together various component software. They provide cost efficiency, integrated functionality, ease of use, optimized performance, centralized support, and enhanced collaboration. While there are challenges, such as the initial learning curve, unused features, and single-vendor dependency, the benefits often outweigh these drawbacks. For digital agencies aiming to streamline operations and enhance productivity, adopting an all-in-one management solution should be a real consideration.

Integration

All-in-One Solutions offer a wide range of integrated features, such as project management, financial tracking, time tracking, client portals, and collaboration tools, all within a single interface. This integration ensures that all necessary tools are readily available and work seamlessly together.

While individual tools may excel in their specific areas, they often lack the seamless integration of an all-in-one solution. Users must manually transfer data between systems, increasing the risk of errors and inefficiencies. Tools like Zapier can reduce this, but those systems are still more fragile than an AIO.

Investment, Support & Resources

From our survey work, we find that digital agencies spend about 4% of their revenue on tools. For a 10FTE shop, this comes out to $64k/yr on average. Cost is a real consideration for these all-in-one tools, but they need to be examined within the context of what they’re replacing.

As we’ll see in the Component Software section, AIOs can often provide a more complete agency management solution for less than the costs of the component software they replace. Initial setup costs associated with onboarding and training are common and need to be considered when selecting an AIO.

Additional savings vs. component software come from reduced administrative overhead. AIO solutions come with centralized billing and fewer vendor relationships, reducing the amount of administrative management needed.

No software works perfectly 100% of the time. Speedy and effective resolutions can make all the difference in the world. Access to comprehensive support services from a single provider can resolve issues more efficiently than bouncing between vendors to uncover the source of the issue and then waiting for a solution.

Agency AIO platforms also tend to publish extensive agency-focused resource libraries, training materials, and community forums that make learning and implementing best practices easy.

Common AIO Challenges

While the argument for AIOs is strong, it’s not without some caveats.

Initial Learning Curve

Despite their user-friendly design, the breadth of features in all-in-one solutions can initially overwhelm new users. Comprehensive training and support are essential to help teams adapt and fully utilize the platform. Most AIOs will require significant training and onboarding, requiring both dollar and time investments from agencies adopting them.

Unused Features

We have heard multiple leaders say their teams use 70-80% of their AIO but haven’t taken the time or aren’t interested in taking full advantage of all the features. This is especially true at smaller agencies.

Single-Vendor Dependence

Relying on a single provider for all management needs can pose risks if the vendor experiences issues or if the solution does not meet evolving business requirements.

AIO Options: Productive

Multiple agency leaders we spoke with stated that implementing Productive has been transformative for their firms.

Leaders specifically call out the software’s ability to consolidate agency management tasks from a number of other software sources, including homebrewed ones, into a single source of truth. The communication, reporting, and forecasting capabilities that this enables makes it easy for leaders to understand what’s going well and where their attention is needed.

The software combines a number of features into a single agency management platform. It includes Customer Relationship Management, Project Management, Resource Management, Profitability and Financial Metrics, and Invoicing. Pricing starts at $9/seat/month, but most will find value in upgrading to the “Ultimate” tier.

A note on our sponsor: Productive sponsored the creation of this guide. They had no input over the content, research, or opinions expressed in this document.

AIO Options: Parallax & Teamwork

Parallax is a resource management and capacity forecasting platform, a quasi-AIO solution that’s another good option for agency management software. Agency leaders have specifically called out their integration consultants for making the onboarding process simpler. In contrast to Productive and Teamwork, Parallax has chosen an integration-style approach focusing on integrating with other tools for a more seamless onboarding and better cross-team adoption. This reduces the cost-saving benefit as agencies will still need other tools in conjunction with Parallax to run their shops. Parallax doesn’t publish pricing on its website but only charges per billable resource.

Teamwork has a similar feature set to Productive and Parallax, but agency leaders were less enthusiastic about its reporting capabilities. Teamwork appears to be the lowest-cost option of the three, but that pricing excludes “add-on” features that, when included, raise the cost significantly.

There are other software solutions that combine many aspects of business management into a single platform, but many of the more generic ones lack an understanding of agency operations or needs.

Component Software

Narrowing The Options

If you don’t go the all-in-one agency management route, there are seemingly infinite options out there. The number of martech options alone is daunting. Each dot on this market map is a logo… Most of these are more generalist software that can be plugged into any business vs. having an agency-specific focus.

The core functions that agencies look to solve with these software solutions exist in Revgen, Production, and Support. Revgen software mainly consists of marketing automation and customer relationship management software. We’re limiting our discussion of production software to project management and issue tracking. The various tools available to help perform software development, digital marketing, and design are beyond the scope of this guide.

To identify the most commonly used, endorsed, and combined tools, we evaluated the various responses to our tools surveys and combined that with what we’ve seen in our strategy work with agency clients. These evaluations are appropriate for digital agencies in the 10-100 FTE range and reflect how agencies are actually using the tools. Most of these tools offer significantly more features than the specific function they fall into, but we found that agencies will tend to use them primarily for a singular purpose. This may differ from how the various tools position themselves.

Revgen Software

Marketing Automation

HubSpot is the clear leader in the marketing automation space. It’s both the most popular and, anecdotally, the most well-liked. It’s also one of the more expensive options as you add on their marketing, sales, service, content, etc. This tool can quickly grow beyond marketing automation, but a dedicated agency tool may make more sense at this stage.

Customer Relationship Management

Pipedrive has built out a broad suite of sales-enablement features that agency leaders seem to love. It can do some advanced workflows, but even the base setup can give leaders a solid view into their sales pipelines. Leaders praised its simplicity.

Production Software

Capacity Management

Parallax and Forecast (Harvest) are both great (and popular) options for capacity management. While Parallax does a lot more than just capacity management, its primary benefit lies in providing insight into past, present, and future utilization, revenue, and project health.

Project Management

Jira and Asana are pretty evenly tied as far as agency project management software is concerned. Jira tends to show up more in the more dev-focused shops, while Asana is more popular with the marketing and design agencies. Leaders noted that the Jira setup and implementation process can be significant, and they often seek out expert implementation consultants for this step.

Issue Tracking

Jira and ClickUp are the big players in issue tracking. Again, Jira is more popular with the more dev-focused agencies, while ClickUp is more popular with the marketing shops.

Support Software

Finance and Accounting

Quickbooks is one of the most common accounting solutions but Xero has become more popular in recent years as agency leaders report frustrations with Quickbooks. The main thing to consider here is what your accounting/tax/bookkeeping team is familiar and comfortable with. Both seem to be sufficient for running a digital agency, but leaders generally frame Xero in a more positive light.

Payment Processing

Stripe is the clear winner here. It’s the most versatile and feature-rich processor that developers can integrate into just about anything. It’s rock-solid, and they’ve consistently released innovative features over the years.

Human Resources

Gusto received high marks from many agency leaders for simplifying payroll, but issues with state-specific withholding were more common than one would like. ADP is used more by larger shops who praise its reliability.

Communication

Slack is the most commonly used communication software in the agency space. Real-time communication is still dominated by Zoom with a growing contingent of shops adopting Google Meet. After asking multiple leaders about why they chose one or the other, it seems to come down to personal UX/UI preferences more than any specific capabilities.

Internal Knowledgebase

While many agency leaders use Google Docs for their internal wikis, those who use Notion seem to love it. They specifically call out its versatility; some have built out entire workflows beyond simple operating procedures within the software.

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