How to solve the profit visibility problem in your agency, with Anna Appleton-Claydon & Alfie Wenegieme

Speaker A: People don't realise if time is your biggest resource, you need to know where it's going and you need to keep an eye on it. And if you don't have that, you've got no idea exactly where you are. And sometimes this is why agencies can end up in a position where all of a sudden, if things do dry up a little bit, it's not good enough just to have some money coming in and doing some work and the money coming out. You need to know exactly where you are, because it could be that suddenly the money's all going out and you're stuck, and then that's when redundancies happen or you suddenly go into liquidation.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Creative Agency Account Manager Podcast. I'm Jenny Plant and I'm on a mission to help account managers understand, um, the agency business and develop an entrepreneurial mindset in their role so they can show up as a commercially aware advisor to their clients rather than a reactive order taker. Hello, and welcome Back to episode 166. This episode is about what happens when an agency decides to build its own solution to an internal problem and then ends up selling it to other agencies. Anna, uh, Appleton Claydon and her team didn't set out to create and sell a product. They were trying to solve their own operational frustrations around quoting time, tracking, project visibility, profitability and reporting. But as other agency owners started seeing the tool in action and asking if they could use it too, it suddenly became something much bigger. So the heart of this conversation is not really about software. It's about spotting a problem from the inside, solving it properly and then discovering that the same problem exists across all the other agencies. So I hope you enjoy this episode. I certainly have never seen a tool like, like this, so I'm really excited about sharing this conversation. So let's go over to the intro to Anna and Alfie now. So I'm delighted to be talking to Anna Appleton Claydon today and Alfie Wenner Guillem for the second time on the show. So welcome back, Alfie, a quick introduction. Anna Appleton Claydon is managing director of We Create Digital and co founder of Refinery, a platform built to help agencies manage projects, target time, profitability and pipeline more effectively. With a background in agency operations, UX and digital delivery, Anna has played a key role in turning an internal agency tool into a product now being adopted by other agencies. And that's the reason that I have them on the show today to talk about how that works. Alfie is very well known in the agency community. He's an agency pricing and profitability expertise who helps agencies improve commercial performance through better financial visibility, pricing and utilization. As part of the team behind Refinery, Alfie has brought deep expertise in agency finance and commercial modeling to help shape the platform's strategic value. So thank you both for taking the time to talk to me today. Anna, uh, can I start off with you? What was the operational frustration inside your own agency that made you think we need to build something to solve this problem?

Speaker A: So when our agency started, it was tiny, as most agencies are. It was my husband who actually began it, and it was a single person team. And, um, so many of the platforms just don't allow for that size. It's minimum users number three or you've got to have five. And at the same time, he needed so many different features and functionality. But when you're just starting out, the cost really matters. And he wanted things to work exactly how he worked, but they didn't. They worked more generically. So he built it just to start out as a quoting tool, and then over time it added on ticketing, added on time tracking. And for us, it's trying to make it be so it's end to end so you don't have to switch between tools and all the data is gathered in one single place. Because when you're a small agency, you just don't have time to waste. You don't have a single person who dedicates all their time to looking at reporting. You have people in there who are doing multiple roles, really. So, for example, I do a lot of hr, I do a lot of financial reporting and operations. I need to be able to jump into any project or any report at any point in time and just get the answers I need rather than to spend a lot of time faffing around in spreadsheets.

Speaker B: So originally you felt that it was costly when you were first starting the agency to actually track where you were operationally. And also there was this proliferation of different tools, but all for a slightly different thing. So just out of interest, before you started developing this proprietary tool that you've got now, which we'll talk about in a minute, what were you using just out of interest for time tracking, quoting, all of those different tasks, spreadsheets, uh,

Speaker A: Google Sheets was our best friend, as it is for many agencies. I think that's one of the most popular tools that people use actually, rather than the platform. And as well, we would have a spreadsheet that would connect to a spreadsheet. And we've seen it as well when we, um, speak to other agencies that sometimes the spreadsheets within spreadsheets within spreadsheets. And it's this sort of infinite loop of spreadsheets. And we were very similar and sometimes it was because actually we weren't tracking our time because there wasn't a tool at that point. When we did start tracking our time, it was a standalone time tracking tool that cost $10 per user per month just to look at the time tracking. But then it didn't connect to the projects as well. So then we would use Trello for our projects. So we would be bouncing around between spreadsheets, Trello time tracking tool. And those were the three main points that we had. We had nothing around the financial side, nothing around the profitability, over servicing, utilization. Just nothing existed really for us.

Speaker B: Alfie, you must see this a lot with the agencies that you're working with, particularly like Anna said, when they first start out. So is that something that you also see?

Speaker C: Yeah, 100%. And I'll take it a step further and even say it doesn't just apply to the agencies that are just starting off, even the big agencies. Right. My whole career has been working in global agencies, you know, the webishandwicks, the Edelmans of the world before I started consulting for small to medium sized agencies. And even those agencies didn't have one system that connected all the dots, which meant that your reporting was streamlined, you could input time, get reporting, all of that sort of stuff. So 100%, the small agencies, big problem, you know, they struggle with this sort of stuff. And I actually remember when I started consulting a lot of these agencies would ask me what could they be using for, you know, time tracking or quoting or pricing and all this sort of stuff. And I honestly didn't know. So I just recommend something that I'd heard about. But oftentimes they'd come back and say, yeah, it just wasn't right for us. I didn't work. It did one of the 10 things we wanted, but it wasn't doing the other bit. So it wasn't doing it very well. So I think it's been a problem that's been around for ages and it is a problem today with many agencies is, you know, having the right system to track your time and get your reports and price and you know, forecast and manage your CRM clients and all these things is a big challenge.

Speaker B: So I just wanted to dig in on what you just said there. Alfie, what do you deem the core elements of running a business? Operationally you've just kind of listed them there, tracking time for you and your team, pricing, forecasting, uh, CRM. What have I missed?

Speaker C: Those are the core things. But ultimately, what we're trying to do, when you're running a business, the key thing is you're going to make decisions. The decisions you make drive growth, drive profitability. So what you want is visibility. That is the key thing. If you don't have visibility, you can't make the right decisions. So when we talk about time tracking, or we talk about forecasting, or we talk about the reporting elements, all these things are doing is giving you data and insights into what your business is doing. So to answer your question of what are the elements is start with what are the things I need to know and understand about my business to run this business? And then from a platform point of view, how can I get these things? So if I want to know what people are working on, I need to look at their timesheets to see where the hours are going. If I need to understand, well, of the time that is going onto the system, how much of that time is billable time versus admin and all this sort of stuff. I need a utilization report. If I want to say, how much am I going to deliver this year from a revenue perspective, I need a forecast report. So it is a lot of different things. You talked about the CRM there, Jenny. Right. So you need to understand your prospects or your clients. You can't just go for any client. You need to qualify, uh, your leads. Right. So you need the right system to allow you to qualify those leads. So you're not working with clients that don't have the budget or clients that don't really understand what you do. So you need a good CRM system to help track that pipeline and track, you know, your potential clients and the potential revenue. So there's a lot of different things, but ultimately what you want is a system that will give you clear visibility of how the business is operating.

Speaker B: Brilliant. Thank you so much. So, Anna, coming back to you then, at what point did this stop being something that your husband developed originally to sort of solve this problem of bringing all of these elements together in a workable solution and start feeling like actually we've got this working for ourselves in one platform? And perhaps better question, what is refinery like? What was that solution that he came up in a prototype that has now obviously become something that you're effectively selling to other agencies?

Speaker A: So I joined the agency back in 2017, and one of the first things that I did was try to get more processes in place. So I took on for all operations, finances and I needed to get everything lined up in a way where it worked for us. And we did quite a lot of work with other agencies. So we were often their digital partner. Whether they're a design agency, marketing, they'd often bring us in and over time we'd often share things from our platform. So it might be that we share a quote or might be we share a time tracking report so they can see the hours delivered and they say, well, this is just so easy. How are you doing this? What platform are you using? And the more we spoke about with other agencies, other networking, often it would come up about how much time you just spend on the admin, on the tasks that feel like they shouldn't be the priority but end um up having to be the priority because otherwise it stops someone else from delivering their work. The more I raised about, well, actually our platform worked really well for us and explained how it would work. They'd go, well, that sounds great, but can I use it then? Obviously. Well, it's only an internal one, doesn't look very pretty. So we decided to start building something that we could then launch as a separate tool platform that other people could access. And it allowed us to think more broadly as well about what we wanted to achieve with our business and where we had gaps. So for us, Refinery at that point became not just, uh, how are we solving our own problems, but thinking more broadly about what are the friction points that all agencies are having. And the more we spoke with them, it was very similar problems. And as Alfie said, a lot of these problems were not just the small agencies. My previous agency I worked in was over 100 people. And I would get incredibly frustrated at times because there was nothing to even see on a project of who's doing what once each item needs to be delivered by, how much time has everyone spent on it. And to have that single source of truth of anything related to that project just in one place. And this is what Refinery essentially became. It's a single place for everything to be held, whether it's any piece of information related to a client, a lead, finance, data, employees, for it to all be within that single place.

Speaker B: And you are both right. I mean, I'm reflecting on my experience. I worked at Publicis and we had a utilization system that wasn't talking to our forecast. And uh, trying to make decisions based on that single source of truth was nigh impossible. And then when you tried to recreate that information in another way, in another place, you'd get those inconsistencies. So all of what you're saying, I'm sure there's lots of people listening right now in the agency space thinking, absolutely. So, Alfie, I remember talking to you when you were working with Anna together. So tell us a bit about that story because I remember having a conversation with you and you said, I've just been chatting to Anna, uh, and you won't believe it. They are doing something so brilliant and I'm going to work with them. So tell us a bit about that story.

Speaker C: Yeah, brilliant to tell that story. I'll just kind of rewind a little bit to, uh, like I was saying, I worked in the bigger agencies, the Edelman, Weber Shandwick and I just talked about the problems that they had with, you know, systems not talking to each other. And when I left Weber Shandwick, I thought, okay, a lot of people need this end to end system. I'm going to build it and I'm the least techy person on earth, right? So you know, that was a giant task to do. So I tried to build it, didn't work out and I just abandoned it. So fast forward, I set up my own consultancy. I start working with small to medium sized agencies. And like I said before, a lot of people were asking me what they could use and you know, I recommended things that I knew, sort of, and eventually I met Anna and Anna told me about what she was building. From the moment she showed it to me, I just actually thought back. This is where you kind of enter into the story. Uh, Jenny, the first time I was on your podcast, you talked about different things, talks about pricing and all of this sort of profitability. And I remember telling you at the time that I have this thing in my head. I know how it needs to work end to end. I just don't know how to develop it. So I'd love to work with someone that could develop this pricing model and forecast and all this stuff. And funny enough, when Anna showed me the system, she showed me Refinery. I instantly thought about that conversation we had, Jenny, and how it just kind of came together and it was, it was, it was funny, it was interesting. So, you know, Anna showed me Refinery and you know, just looking at it, I thought, visually this looks great. Because when it comes to agencies, one big problem with people using systems is that most of the systems out there just look clunky. The. There's just too much stuff going on. And for finance people it's fine. We can make heads and tails of numbers and data and all this sort of stuff, but for creative people, comms people, that sort of stuff, they need it to look a certain way. So Anna showed this to me and I'm like, that looks brilliant. And when she started to tell me about what herself and Dean were trying to put together in terms of it being end to end, I was like, brilliant. I know exactly how this thing works. And you know that commercial finance piece, that is my bread and butter. I know that, you know, like the back of my hand. That's what I do. So that was how we kind of came together. And then I contributed on the commercial finance side, the reporting, the pricing, profitability, and then, you know, it all came together with everything else.

Speaker B: So let's all, uh. Right, well, I think you put it out to the universe during that first session, didn't you?

Speaker C: And you were the conduit to kind of put it out to the universe. So I love that, I love that.

Speaker B: I'm so pleased. I was. If there's an agency owner listening and is getting quite excited by what you're saying, talk to me about what this system looks like. And if I was an agency owner listening, what type of agency owner could hit the ground running and easily pick up this system? What's it going to help them do? What's it going to save time doing and how much time does it take to use it and what potentially would it save them using, like all of the tools they're currently using? What platforms does it replace?

Speaker A: Sure. So we have designed Refinery to be for agencies of any size and that's exactly what we're trying to do. We're trying to not block anyone. My agency is all about accessibility and accessibility comes in many different forms and one is just even structure of business, structure of organisation. And for here that's why if you're an agency of one and you want to grow quite rapidly, you're going to need something in place quite quickly and not wait until you get to that larger size and then suddenly have to figure it out. If you're a media agency and you've hit that point now where things have worked okay for a while, as uh, a few agencies have said to us, things are creaking at the seams. They need something that is end to end to just save them time. And also then from a larger agency perspective, as Alfie said, and I used to work for a bigger agency, we know there are bigger agencies that don't have anything in place. So that's why Refinery could actually work across all of them because it has that ability to work in multiple different ways as well in terms of how people work. So it isn't that it's very rigid and for example you have to track time in one particular way and that's it we've set up. So then any kind of problems such as people not tracking time accurately because it's just too tricky and as I've said, very clunky, we've taken that away. So it works across agencies of all sizes and in terms of a day to day and how much time it can save, I think our record so far is an agency saying that they think it could get rid of eight subscriptions. So for some people if they're using something like Trello or Asana and ClickUp for sort of day to day task and project management, other people are using DocuSign and they're just using this for single one off points. They might be using a CRM which often as well people tell us they're using a CRM that they're paying a lot of money for that they're not fully utilizing. And then also when it comes to reporting, I mean some people, this is where. What can it replace? Well, some people aren't doing the reporting so it's actually filling a gap rather than replacing. And in terms of the time it's saving. I actually had an onboarding call on Friday with a new agency and it took us two hours to set up every single team member on there and to start creating rate cards. And the moment we started doing this we identified immediately there was a problem that's affecting their profitability, which is that uh, a certain job level for some of their team, they're not making as much as they are for others and therefore they could easily review that to go, well, how can we make sure that we're making more money off that? And she had taken quite a long time to put together spreadsheets to try to work this out. But at the same time the spreadsheets could only go as far as possible to see then things like what allocation of overheads based on utilization targets should be applied to those people. It's just something, it's very technical when you're talking about it. And it. But as soon as she put the numbers in, it did all the math for her and it told her here's what your profitability is and when it's less than a certain figure that you're aiming for, you can see there there's a leak, it needs to be filled, here's how we're going to do it now. I can go away and do it straight away. So in terms of the actual time saved, it's. I say it's hours, hours, uh, a day. And that's for someone who's in an operations role or an agency leader.

Speaker B: Gosh. So quick setup, huge time saved and cost saving because you're consolidating all of these different tools that you're paying for. Alfie, from your perspective, when you first started seeing the tool, what typical problems show up in other agencies that you think, oh my gosh, this is so exciting because it is going to be a massive benefit.

Speaker C: Great question. I'll kind of start because again, we talk about this being end to end. I'll start from the beginning part, which is when agencies start working with potential clients. And nine times out of 10, those clients are not right for them. They've got the wrong budget or they don't have the right budget. So there's this argument about, oh, should we be working with, or how should we do this, you know, within the budget that they've given us and that sort of stuff. So the problem there is that the qualification process is very poor. They haven't pre qualified those clients to know that we shouldn't be working with. They're not right for us at this time, you know, so Refinery helps solve that problem because there's a whole process, some functionality around being able to qualify those leads and then put it into a pipeline once you start working with it, once you've agreed, yes, this is a potential client we want to work with. It ticks all our boxes. It goes into a pipeline. Now, many agencies don't have a live pipeline. So with this, you've got the pipeline there. And then a big problem, which is a big thing that I Talk about on LinkedIn and everywhere else, is the pricing. Getting the pricing right. Pricing is the most effective way of improving profitability. Now, many agencies don't have their own pricing that relates to their agency. They're either using pricing from a mate who's got a similar agency or some benchmarking news that they got somewhere and they're using those rates, but it doesn't tie into their agency. So Refinery helps you come up with a pricing structure that means that your pricing is profitable and then the process of actually building your proposals and your scopes, you can do that profitably as well through Refinery. And it saves time scoping. A lot of agencies struggle with scoping because it is so time consuming. Every time you work with a client, you have to build a new Scope need to send it out. These people need to input. You send just consumes a lot of time. Now you can do a lot easier on refinery. Right. So you talked about the client from the prospect phase through to how you price the work. And then, you know, you send the proposals or the scope of work to the client, get it approved on the system. This is the part where Anna was talking about it replacing DocuSign, because you can get all that stuff done on the system. Again, saves you time. And then the key thing is, is once you build a profitable project, right, because you've got the price in right, you've got the scope in right. It's then the part of actually managing the profitability. So the timesheet entry, how does that affect the this amazing profitable project that you've built? Because many times people can build a project and it's profitable, but when it comes to delivery, they go off and do something else because again, the systems don't talk to each other. So in this case, as you're tracking your time, you're seeing the impact on profitability as you've built it. And then the other piece is then the resourcing, which agencies struggle with. How do we pivot when it comes to resourcing? Yes, we said we can deliver this work with this amount of resource and all this sort of stuff, but things change and agencies usually aren't able to pivot quick enough. But with this, you can actually move your resourcing around to fit the reality. Right. So that gives you the resourcing ability. And then it all comes together in the reporting. When I've got all of this stuff, well, what does over servicing look like based on the projects that I'm working on? What does utilization look like? Where are people assigning those hours? Right. And how am I using my resource? Then you talk about forecasting. You're able to forecast on there your client profitability. You can rank your clients by size, by revenue. Just to give you again, insight into how your business is performing based on all of this data that you put into the system. And there's a lot more, but just from what I said, you can just see how it ticks a lot of boxes and solves a lot of problems that a lot of the agencies I consult for, ones that I've worked with in the past have. And it's just, it's just great.

Speaker B: Amazing. Thank you so much, both of you for explaining it so succinctly. That's the reason I got you on, because I just think it is Something that I haven't come across before and I do think it genuinely solves a need that we've got at the moment. What about practical things, Anna? Uh, obviously you and Dean have kind of evolved this product. Alfie's come on board, taken it to the next level and you're actively moving marketing it to other agencies. You've got an onboarding call on Friday. What are the questions that agencies typically ask you about the system? Are they worried about where's all the data being held or how does that work? Like what are some of the questions that they have for you?

Speaker A: I think one of the big questions is around cost as there's always a fear there's going to be some extra hidden costs as there are with so many platforms. And um, that's one of the things that we hated about other tools as well. So we came up with a structure where it's a single cost per user per month. There's no add ons, there's no enterprise level pricing where you've got to call someone to find out the pricing for your team. So it's very transparent. And I think you can tell from speaking to other agencies that's a common reason uh, for why they're exploring others because the costs have ended up escalating or they've ended up being extra hidden costs that they haven't budgeted for. And especially I think in today's world where people are very focused on how can they cut back as many costs as possible, how can they have a very lean agency? That's something that's very front of mind. And so I think that one comes up quite a lot. I think another point that comes up is around particularly the commercial side. So as Alpha said, it's so crucial to have that kind of data because that's a big missing gap for so many agencies. They might think that they have some kind of idea of it but sometimes it does come down to a spreadsheet. And if that uh, spreadsheet isn't being updated regularly then you don't know if your figures are actually true at any point in time. And I've had one agency and I asked about how they're tracking their current profitability and they said their accountant managed everything. I said that's great. So when was last time that you got kind of an update on those figures? It was well, I'm um, coming to my year end in two months so then I'll know. And obviously they have an online accounting system. I think they use Xero, so they're able to look and see a certain amount in Xero. But really if you don't have that kind of data, you are completely blind.

Speaker B: Completely.

Speaker A: And it's little things like throughout the conversations we have. Profitability leak is a kind of a term that comes up quite a lot where people don't realize where they're just losing out on money. It's where people, for example, add in, uh, freelancers or contractors onto a project and put that cost as a cost line, but then they don't put any of their time in to manage or to review that freelancer. That's still time. And this is what it comes down to often is that people don't realize if time is your biggest resource, you need to know where it's going and you need to keep an eye on it. And simply, if you don't have that, you've got no idea exactly where you are. And sometimes this is why agencies can end up in a position where all of a sudden, if things do dry up a little bit, it's not good enough just to have some money coming in and doing some work and the money coming out. You need to know exactly where you are. Because it could be that suddenly the money's all going out and you're stuck. And then that's when redundancies happen or you suddenly go into liquidation. And this, we've seen this happen over the past year. We've seen quite a few agencies go under and so some who wouldn't have expected to. And you think, well, what happened there? And, uh, often I think it's just that there's something that's missing, there's data that's missing, and if you don't have that visibility, that could be the end of things.

Speaker B: I think what you've both described is an education in itself really in how to run a business, isn't it? All of the elements we're discussing, if, uh, there's any elements that have come up and an agency owner's listening to this, thinking, oh, I don't have any sense of how profitable I am actually, or I'm, um, not forecasting or. Actually my CRM doesn't talk to this other system? There's probably some thoughts going on. Just a couple of quick questions. Is the system replacing all of the tools, or are there instances where perhaps the agency's CRM is working well so they want refinery to work with their existing CRM so they can still use it?

Speaker A: Every agency is different. Every agency works in slightly different ways, but we have got integrations to allow that and we can work with agencies to go, well, here's how we can make sure we work for you. I think it's an interesting point because some people do have tools that they love and that they've had for quite a long time, but for one particular aspect of it, but for everything else and it doesn't work. So then there's always going to be this decision for them to make as to what's more important. Is it everything's a whole or is it going to be actually sticking with one tool but then still having these huge gaps? So we can work with agencies who still have their CRMs or who still have their HR tools and we can integrate and that's not a problem.

Speaker B: Alfie, talk to me about some of the success stories that you've seen with agencies that have adopted Refinery.

Speaker C: It's funny, uh, Anna and I were just talking about, um, I've got a client that I consult for. Very recently they signed up to Refinery. And you know, unfortunately, because prior to working with them, they were working with, actually they weren't working with any consultants. They were just kind of getting information from their year end accountants who don't know anything about agencies and so on and so forth. So even though they were growing exponentially, you know, top line, they weren't profitable for the last three or four years. And I'm talking big numbers. You know, this agency is well over 2 million in turnover. So their profitability was really low. So one of the key things when I started working with them was the fact that they just didn't know what was going on in the business. It was kind of, you know, fingering the uh, year end. We just hope for the best kind of thing. So we've started working with or they started using Refinery and now it's a different ball game because starting from the project and how they price the project, the first thing we did, again, one of the main things I preach when I'm talking about profitability is the pricing side of things. We had a whole pricing review through Refinery, right? And then we determined that their whole pricing structure was just unprofitable. And they had been using this pricing method for the last three to four years. So that was behind. And then just the way they actually delivered the work that was inefficient completely. And because again they didn't have the visibility, all they did was what they need, the best they could do, you know, put people on this, move people about. And what that meant was their staff costs went through the roof because as they Grew year on year. They just hired people year on year without understanding the real cost base and the real impact of, you know, hiring those people on profitability. So through using Refinery now we're now able to look at the profitability of every single because we know the pricing is profitable. So now we're focused on the delivery. As they're delivering, are, uh, they staying within that profitability that we've built into every single project and now it's literally been a complete 180. All of their projects are now, um, profitable. They have not hired a single person since we started working together and started using Refinery because now they can look at the system and go, we've got so much capacity in the business, you don't need to hire people. What we need to do is work on the efficiency and how people are working on specific projects and the profitability within projects, which means we've got enough resource here. So what that effectively is doing is managing their cost base, which has been a big problem. So they had a pricing problem, they had a cost based problem. That is that the people side of things. And just through the visibility that we've been able to have through using Refinery now, complete game changer. Everything's not working as it should. Everything's profitable. We know where the problems are coming in. So if they decide to invest X amounts in a client, so they could be making 60% profit, they decided to make 50% profit. We know why. Ah. And we're making sure we track against that uh, 50% profit to where it doesn't become 20% or 30% or a loss.

Speaker B: Anna, uh, any other stories from your side that you've heard from agencies that have adopted it and perhaps challenges like are there any gaps that you presumably as a product that you own and you're constantly evolving it, are there still areas that you want it to fit

Speaker A: that it currently isn't where it's working really well so far we know. So there's a couple of smaller agencies who, as Alfie said, on the pricing side, when a client would ask them for a rough idea of a ballpark for a piece of work they wanted, they'd pretty much just pluck a figure and then say the figure and then deliver it. But often it would go over hours. Now what they're doing is building it all out in the proposal builder, so separating everything out individually, putting the hours in, and they're immediately realizing that they probably would have said half that figure before refinery and now they're able to go, no, this is how much it's going to take. And obviously you do sometimes have then clients who push back, but at least you can see where you can cut back on time without just arbitrarily saying, okay, sure, we can do it for a thousand pounds less, or whatever it is that sometimes happens with small agencies. And another thing is actually just even building those proposals. So for example, yesterday I actually had to do quite an urgent quote for one of our clients who came to us quite recently because they'd had a poor experience with another agency. And I managed to build the quote within two hours for a full new website redesign and rebuild. And there's just no way because I've got a lot of the content for what they need built into templates. So I can just pull through the relevant parts of templates. And this is what we've seen with other agencies. They're telling us before they would have to spend so much time and they'd be very torn between what do they focus on, the new business or the delivery. Because you want to get the new business in, but you need to keep the clients happy who you already have, whereas now they can much more easily fit in both. And they can as well see which clients they're getting higher profitability from compared to others and which are the ones who are over servicing or the ones who are pushing for the scope creep. This is all captured and it's very easy to be able to manage all this. So that's why we're seeing particular successes with some of the smaller agencies in terms of the future refinery. It is the product that will evolve, it is a platform that will evolve and we very much are looking to see how we can add in extra value for it. We want to make sure that we're making it as easy as possible for agency owners by solving their problems. Any kind of pain points or friction we're overcoming. So sometimes it's the case that we are thinking about, right, how is AI going to play a role in that? And also if there are certain features where people are saying to us, oh, I really love this tool, then we're going, right, what is it about that tool that they say they love so much? And then how can we try to bring that into ours? So we're very much responding to what people are telling us, what we're hearing, and also where the industry is moving. So we want to be at the front of that. And one part of that is, again, as I mentioned earlier, accessibility is a big part. So our team specialise in UX design and development. So we can use all those skills to really think about how do we make it as flexible, how do we avoid it from being really clunky? Alvin mentioned earlier, this is why lots of other platforms are problematic for agencies. So it's not a case of necessarily as, well, how are we going to add on even more? Just, how can we make it even easier to use? How can make any features that get introduced seamless and just become another part of that process that it's almost like they don't really notice, but then a month later they realize, well, how did I ever do without that? That's the kind of approach we're going with.

Speaker B: Okay, a couple of things that I want to come back to, the AI thing, because that's a bigger sort of conversation piece and I'd love to hear both of your views on that. This Refinery platform is dependent on people capturing their time behind the scenes, right? Because occasionally you get an agency that doesn't track time. I know it's rare behind the scenes. We're talking behind the scenes, right? You're smiling, Alfred. What do you, what do you find

Speaker C: it? Because, yeah, a lot of my posts, uh, on LinkedIn, I'm talking about this problem of people not tracking time. So every time someone talks about time tracking, I can't help but smile because, um, if I don't do that, I'll probably cry.

Speaker B: So, uh, someone else did a post that was in Operations, and I have to admit, obviously I used to read utilization reports at Publicis and make hiring decisions, investment decisions, resourcing decisions. It was fundamentally important. However, I hated filling in timesheets. You know, I've got a big sort of emotional reaction to it myself now. I was late with them. I didn't do, uh, it regularly sometimes. I used to think it was a work of fiction. So I've got this conflicted view. But, Alfie, tell me a bit more about this. The success of Refinery really is based on the accuracy of the inputs, right?

Speaker C: 100%. So timesheet in. I think that problem is as old as time, right? Because a lot of people, for one, like you say, the process of actually putting the time in, they're just averse to doing it. And unfortunately, some of the owners of the agency, I guess at some point they were client, uh, services people and they hated doing timesheets. And now that they've got their own agencies, you know, it hasn't changed. They still don't want to do timesheets. But the thing about timesheeting is as daunting as people Think it is, it is essential to any. And, um, forget agencies, any professional services businesses where you're actually selling expertise. That expertise, the unit of measurement for those expertise is time. Because you're using humans to actually deliver this work. Well, what is the measurement? You know, so the example I often give is any other business. You know, you take any manufacturing business, they have an accurate, down to the tee measurement of the costs that they use to produce whatever product they produce. So I use the Mercedes as an example. Mercedes, uh, Benz. At any point in time, you can ask their operations people, how much do you spend in costs to buy rubber for the tires or metal for the cars? And they can tell you that because that's linked to their profitability. But somehow agencies, we kind of feel like, yeah, we don't need to track the time, but the time is your cost. Because if you're not tracking that time, well, how do you know how much cost has gone into this project? Right? And, um, on a larger scale, how do I then know when I need to hire more people? And I don't really, I don't already have the resource, you know, in the business. So tracking that time. I think one big thing is people often get it mistaken with billing the time. And, um, they're two separate things. Tracking the time allows you to manage your costs, measure your costs. Billing the time is something different because if you value price, which is what I'm a big advocate of, you know, fixed fee, value, price, you still need to understand the cost that is going into that project, right. To know whether or not I'm still profitable, right? So you can do all the pricing you want, but if all you're doing is throwing in resource and hours and time and time into that project, what you're doing is you're eroding your profit margin as you're doing that. So for me is not just important, but I don't see a world where, you know, you run an agency, but you don't know how much time people are spending on things. You know, I'll give you a quick story, right? I went to an event and I was talking to this really smart guy, sold his agency hundreds of millions or whatever it was, and he was on stage and he said, you know, oh, uh, time tracking is not, you know, you shouldn't time track and whatever else. So after the event, because again, like I said to you, Jenny, when I hear time tracking, I just, it kind of does. So I just have to learn more. So I went back into the venue to speak to the guy And I was like, I found that really interesting, you know, not time tracking and all this sort of stuff. I was like, so really, how do you then know what your cost base is in everything that you deliver? And he goes, oh yeah, well you know when you hire a players you saw, uh. And then I was like, yeah, well not everyone can afford a players from day one. And you know, who deems themselves to be a D player anyways, right? So, you know, in theory, yes, you can get away with not time tracking, but at the same time I can go to Vegas and gamble and win a bunch of money, but I can't do that on an ongoing basis without it impacting me or, you know, making me broke at some point. So the time tracking thing, yes, you can do without doing it, but uh, it just. How do you know what clients are profitable? How do you know what projects are overserviced? How do you know who is more billable than the next person and how much time is going on? Stuff people shouldn't even be working on? You don't have that insight. So that's my thing with time tracking.

Speaker B: Love it. Alfie. See how emotional, uh, how he gets about it.

Speaker A: Most agencies time track, they don't. They really don't. I think so many that we come across don't or they, they do it in a way where it's not accurate and then if it's not accurate, your figures aren't accurate. And I think a lot of the times while people are reluctant on this one because of how it's going to be viewed internally, they're worried about how team members are going to take it. But whenever we talk it through, we always explain that's a communication issue and it's one that you solve by explaining what you're using the time tracking for. So there's one agency who I've, um, been on board recently and I was explaining that if you set up utilization targets, everyone can actually see on their dashboard on Refinery what their target is for utilization. That comes from the time tracking. And the aim isn't to go, oh, you're not doing enough work, work harder. It's the aim of how do you prevent burnout? How do you make sure that deadlines you set for your team are realistic? When we first started setting utilization targets for our team, we put them too high. But we were able to see that based on the time they were tracking. So for example, all of our developers are on 82%. They started out much higher, high 80s. And we were, this isn't working. You clearly you need to have more time because you're helping out on reviewing quotes or having catch ups with team members where we aren't. It's just things like marketing and we need your input because it's about how do we do this particular piece of development. It all adds up, all those little bits of time add up. So we need to make allowances for that bit of time. Also training, internal meetings, when you sit down, you go, let's have a team session and talk about this. You need to allow for all these different points. So we brought it down to 85% and it was still a bit too high. So now we've reviewed it and it's down to 82%. That means that everyone is tracking six and a half hours out of the eight hour working day for billable client work. And everyone's happy with this because in the past I've had feedback of this deadline when as soon as it was set, it wasn't realistic because I was booked in for eight hours a day. I haven't had anyone who says to me, I wish we weren't time tracking. Or this is really frustrating because I've not said to them, why aren't you doing more? It's often a question of me going, right, what is it that we're doing wrong? What am I not giving you enough time for? So now, for example, every single week I have recurring tasks in people's resourcing calendar, uh, for professional development. So it might be reviewing their feedback and thinking, right, let's look back at the week, what did I do? What do I need to do next week? Little things like that often just slip by people because time isn't given, they're expected to do it in their own time training. If I've got someone who's working towards an accessibility certification, I need to make sure that he's got the time to do that. If he's booked in for seven hours a day on client work and giving him a little bit of time for addressing feedback that comes in from other clients or ad, uh, hoc requests, when's he going to fit in the training? It's not going to happen. We need that training because then we've got an extra person on our team who can provide this level of accessibility expertise. So it all comes back to what helps them, helps me. But it needs to be that full and open transparent conversation. But by having time tracking, it's so easy to do on refinery, you can do it in so many different ways. So it's not a case of you do it this one way, that's it. So it solves that problem of, oh, it's too hard. And also it's very easy to catch up on things. So if you get to the end of the day and you go, ah, I didn't track because I started something that had a client call and then had to be pulled into this meeting, things do get away from us. Refinery still allows for that situation. So you're not going to suddenly end up at the end of the day or the end of the week and go, what did I do at 3 o' clock on Wednesday? And because of that it's still very accurate. So time tracking is completely feasible. I think often agencies just put it off because it feels too hard and they're worried about it and about it putting people off. The only people that's really going to put people off are the people who maybe aren't stepping up or the people who, they do have a problem with how they see it as, uh, because they don't really see their time as money. And I think where you have that commercial accountability chat with them, it should solve that. So as Alvi said, having all that data and um, be able to understand it and explain it to them, that could be what makes the difference really. And that could be the difference between the profitability rate being say 50% or 60% for an agency.

Speaker B: I think it's all in the transparent communication as you said. Anna, you've clearly communicated so well with your team. They're totally on board and they get it and they understand why. You said that there was different ways to track the time to avoid saying, oh, got to the end of the week, what did I do on Monday? Do you want to just tell us, just share with us one methodology that works within Refinery that when you go

Speaker A: to easy way to talk them in. So it's been the back holiday weekend. They come in on Tuesday morning, they go to the resource calendar to see what tasks they've been set. They click on the task, it's got all the information on it and there's a button that says start timer. You click that and that's time tracking. And then at uh, any point if you need to go. So if you're a developer and you're working on the code, when you go back to Refinery, in the top right hand corner there's a little timer button. That's a quick shortcut so you can hit stop or start. And there is also saved your favorite time entry. So things that you do on a regular basis you can say was favourite or all your ones from today or yesterday or the day before. So you don't have to go to each individual task, you can just go, I'm just restarting something from this morning. I'll quickly go to that shortcut. So it's wherever you're looking for the information about the task you're working on, the timer is there ready for you.

Speaker B: Brilliant. I'm glad you said that because I use Toggle, which is a time tracking thing and that kind of works for me. Let's talk about AI. I'm really keen to get both of your perspectives on how it changing the game for agencies. You know, it's. It's the big topic that everyone's talking about and I've done lots of podcasts about it, given we are talking about time and human time. Anna, perhaps can you share with us, Start off before I come to Alfie, what conversations are you having with your clients about their expectations?

Speaker A: But I've got some clients who think that everything can now be done in about 10% of the time. And um, then I've got clients who have got no idea but they say, and what's AI doing this piece of work? So I think clients are very much still in the dark. I think the problem is that sometimes they're the ones who don't know that much, but then they expect the agency to have all the answers. And I think sometimes agencies need to be more honest about it and say, well, actually we don't have all the answers or things are changing on a month by month or sometimes more frequent basis. But I have had one client for our agency who has expected that we could do a full redesign rebuild of their website in a day. And I think sometimes you have this kind of level of it's not ignorance, but it's just because they've been led by the hype that they might have read. And I think because so many people are very keen not to be left behind, there's a bit more of a front that gets put up about.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: Yep. We can do anything and often it is the case that actually you can figure things out. But I think you also need to be honest about that and I think be realistic with clients as well and talk about the value where it can be added, but also where you still need that kind of the human side or the strategic input. And I think we definitely saw over the past year a lot of output that was AI based and now it's being redone because it didn't work either. Uh, it didn't engage with users, it didn't reach the audience, and it became just very samey. And now we're seeing a lot more people put more focus into still using AI, but use it strategically. So not using it for everything, not using it for all your copywriting, your imagery, but actually think about where it can help you stand out, but where you still need to then focus on the actual delivery part from your agency and where that could still show the specialist value that you provide.

Speaker B: I'm glad you said that, because, yes, you can do a website in two minutes. Um, but is it the website that's going to achieve the outcomes that you want it to achieve? So I'm just curious and interested in how agencies are changing that conversation to focus more on, you know, what are you actually paying us for? You're paying for, and you mentioned it, strategic thinking, judgment. What actually is going to work based on all of our experience and expertise. Alfie, same question to you, really. What are you hearing, what conversations are being had and how are you, uh, agencies responding?

Speaker C: Yeah, so I think for me, my clients are agencies. So what I'm seeing with the whole AI thing is one, there's a lot of talk about AI, just broadly speaking. Right. But I'm not seeing it the way people are talking about it in terms of. Yeah, well, we're using AI. Uh, I think what is really happening and uh, from a practical perspective this works, is a lot of the agencies that I work with or speak to are using AI, first of all, internally. So they're using AI to improve the way they work, improve the processes in the business, improve efficiencies in the business, improve the visibility and everything else within the business. So what that is helping them do is again, reduce that cost space so they're not having to use as many people as they would have used in the past, because they're using more AI. But also what it's doing is improving the quality of work as well, because they're not using AI as a substitute for people in terms of delivery. What they're using is using the AI to shorten the time of delivery. So a lot of the basic mockups or things like that are done with AI, and then they improve it from there. So that's what I'm saying. What I'm seeing within agencies is more of the internal use of AI to better the agencies, to improve the value, uh, within the agency and what they offer. So with that, I think now more than ever, it is then important to understand your pricing, because what is happening is in the past, a lot of agencies, especially the ones that for whatever reason, have to price on time. All what I said now impacts that, because if what you're doing is charging your time to the client directly, then it means you're going to make less revenue because it's not taking you as long to deliver that work. So the emphasis now more than ever, um, that I'm trying to get clients to understand and to do is value pricing, right? So you're not selling the time, you're selling the value that you're delivering to the client. So how long it takes for you to deliver it is irrelevant. So again, like I said before, you still need to understand the cost base. So when you do your pricing, you come up with your value price. You still need to understand how you deliver it and manage that. And that's where the AI bit comes in, all the tools and all that sort of stuff. But I keep saying to agencies, with all the new ways of working with AI and the improvements and efficiencies, you really need to understand that value pricing, uh, so you're not tying your revenue to the time it takes you to deliver because that time is shrinking more and more every day. So if you want to make more revenue and improve your profitability, understand value pricing.

Speaker B: How successful do you see that agencies are with value pricing, particularly as some clients are dealing with procurement teams?

Speaker C: So in all honesty, I always say to people, first of all, you need to understand, because people throw that term, um, value pricing out there, right? But they can't really tell you how you value price, right? Because mainly with value pricing, the key term there is value. You need to understand the value that the work you're delivering delivers to the client. And then your pricing is based on that. So that part there is a vague term. Um, it's an art. But there is a science to coming up with that value price, right? To where your outcome, what you're charging the client, is based more on you're focusing on the outcome of that work. So a, uh, lot of agencies that I'm working with that I'm seeing, so when they look at it as a value price thing, they may think, oh yeah, we're not value pricing. But if you tweak your thinking and think of it as a fixed fee, then, yes, more clients are doing that because value pricing is essentially a fixed fee. You've agreed the fee and it doesn't tie to your hours. So in that sense, I'm seeing a lot of agencies move more to the fixed fee. Model. And if you then put the art side of things, which is tying the value to that fixed fee, then yes, a lot of agencies are adopting value pricing in that sense and, um, moving away from the time tracking. So, yeah, it is happening. Just a lot of people don't realize they're doing it.

Speaker B: I agree with everything you've just said and it was very well put actually, because pure value pricing can be tricky and it's not always applicable. It's very difficult to pin down. But fixed fee makes total sense tied to the value you're delivering. And I'm seeing it in my own work with account managers having a lot more conversations on outcomes and how are we moving the needle for you? So understanding those value metrics, etc. It's something I'm sure we could all talk about for longer. But I just want to say thank you both for coming on and talking so thoroughly about Refinery. I personally think it's brilliant. I hope that you'll get a good response to this podcast and to that point, Anna, uh, what is the best way, if someone's even curious to learn

Speaker A: the best, what is the best step to see what it can do? I think the thing that Alfie always says that he likes about my demos is I can speak really quickly so I can cover a lot of. Because so much needs to be covered, because it can just do so much. It has so many features. So I think booking a demo means that you have a chance to really go into the detail and to see what matters to you. So if it is the resourcing side, you want to see the calendar, if it is the time tracking and you want to see just how easy it is or the reporting to see what data are you getting and how can you break it down. A demo is the best way to do that.

Speaker B: Great. And what's the website if someone wants to just kind of look at, uh, the pricing? Do you have a dedicated website where people can just.

Speaker A: Refinery.com and people can always email me as well@, uh, annaefinery.com and they can see everything on there, including more podcast episodes that we have with Alfie doing with various people to understand a little bit more about his thinking on that commercial side as well as the practical parts of Refinery.

Speaker B: Great, thank you so much. And Alfie, what are you offering to agency owners at the moment? How can they work with you as well? And what's the best way to do that?

Speaker C: So I'm on LinkedIn, so Alfie Wenigeme and what I offer agencies is just a way to improve profitability. And you do that through improved pricing. You do that through financial planning and visibility. And I consult with them on that basis. And I also do commercial finance training for agency founders and their teams, whether it's leadership, all the way down to the junior execs, just helping them understand commerciality, how to improve commerciality, and ultimately how to help the agency grow profitably. And just to add to that, I think this is where Refinery ties in perfectly with what I do and what I offer clients, because what I offer is the solution to their problem. And Refinery is kind of how we do that, how we get the visibility, how we can improve the process of growing this agency profitably.

Speaker B: Uh, well, thank you so, so much. I will put all of those links to reach you both, uh, in the show notes. And just a huge thank you for, for coming and talking about it.

Speaker C: Thank you so much, M for having us. And thank you twice.

Speaker A: Yeah,

Speaker B: I hope you enjoyed my chat with Anna, uh, and Alfie. And I'll include the links to both of their LinkedIn profiles so you can follow them on LinkedIn and also to Refinery, so you can check out the platform for yourself. And finally, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter if you want to be kept up to date with the ever changing world world of agency account management. And also to be notified of any upcoming events where you can meet and network with your peers in the industry or any mini trainings that I'm running. Thanks, as always for listening and I look forward to talking to you on the next one.