Case Study

From pitch to invoice on one operating layer.

A creative agency brought us in to stop running the business out of a dozen tools. Project status, staffing, billables, and margin, all in one place, with the work moving cleanly through every stage.

IndustryCreative / Agency EngagementJumpstart + Deployment Studio
12tools
Collapsed into one
2days
From kickoff to scoped plan
35%
Faster invoice cycle
100%
Real-time utilization visibility
Agency board · live ops
The opportunity

An agency running on craft. And a stack running on duct tape.

The work was great. The operations weren't. Scopes lived in Google Docs, status in Asana, time in Harvest, billing in QuickBooks, staffing in a spreadsheet. Each Monday started with a meeting to reconcile.

They came to us looking for one place to run the business from, without trading the parts of their workflow that made their work theirs.

BeforeAfter
How we worked together

We mapped the studio's craft, then we mapped the ops.

Two weeks of shadowing real engagements. We watched the work move from new business through delivery and saw exactly where it slowed and where it leaked.

Then we built the layer that connected what the team already loved using, kept the rituals that made the work great, and replaced the duct tape with something the team could actually trust.

Phase 1 · Jumpstart 4 weeks

Map studio + ops

  • Shadow active engagements end-to-end
  • Tool inventory, time/billing audit
  • Margin-leak diagnosis
  • Working prototype of unified board
Phase 2 · Deployment Studio 5 months

Build, roll out, refine

  • Project lifecycle in one connected view
  • Time → billing automation
  • Utilization + margin dashboards
  • Studio-wide rollout and training
What we built

The studio runs the same. The ops finally keep up.

Project lifecycle, staffing, time, and billing on the same layer. No more weekly reconciliation. Leadership can see margins forming in real time.

Module 01

Project lifecycle, end to end.

Every engagement moves through the same lanes: pitch, in flight, review, ship and bill. Every project has scope, team, hours burned, hours left, and margin attached, visible to anyone with reason to look.

Module 02

Staffing that maps to real capacity.

Producers stopped guessing who was free. The system reads every project's plan against every team member's calendar, flags conflicts before they show up on Monday, and surfaces who to pull in next.

Module 03

Time to billing, without the handoff.

Tracked hours turn into draft invoices automatically. Each line is tied to a project phase and a rate card. The finance lead reviews, approves, and sends, the kind of work that used to take a full day, now takes thirty minutes.

The results

Margin you can see. Mondays you can survive.

The work didn't change. The drag did. Producers run their boards. Finance runs clean books. Leadership sees margin before the month closes.

0 tools

Collapsed into one operating layer.

Across project, time, and billing.

0 days

From kickoff to scoped, staffed plan.

Previously a week of producer reconciliation.

0%

Faster invoice cycle, end to end.

Cash hits the books sooner every month.

0%

Real-time utilization visibility.

Conflicts surface before they ruin a Thursday.