Marketing & Media Agencies
The agency's profit is the sum of its client engagements minus its fixed cost, and almost no agency does that sum. A retainer priced years ago at a soft rate now consumes the most senior time at the lowest realization, and survives only because no one has ever set the fees collected against the hours and pass-throughs spent on it. New projects go out under-quoted because the quote is built from a gut sense of effort, not from what similar past work actually cost in hours. The firm chases new logos to cover losses on old accounts it cannot see. New business runs on relationships and a partner's memory. Inbound enquiries and referrals land in different inboxes and WhatsApp threads with no owner; a pitch in progress has no single view of where it stands, what was promised and what it will cost to service if won; proposals go out and are never chased; and the firm cannot say what its real win rate is or which kinds of pitch are worth its time. Senior people pour unpaid hours into pitches that were never likely, because no one qualifies the pipeline.
Who has it
Every segment, in a different shape: digital and performance agencies need per-retainer margin net of media pass-through; creative studios and production houses need per-project margin and lead on project and production pursuits; PR and social agencies need per-retainer realization. This is the front-office expression of the sector's central blindness, and it bites every agency that grows by pitching.
What we build
One honest view of contribution per client and per project: fees billed and collected against the fully-loaded cost of the time booked to that client (from the time capture in the project and time operating system) plus the pass-through costs (media, vendors, freelancers) net of any markup, so the owner sees which accounts carry the firm and which bleed it. A quoting tool that builds a new project or retainer price from the firm's own past actuals (hours by role at loaded cost plus pass-throughs plus target margin) rather than from memory. The profitability view feeds the live dashboards and the quoting tool is a small purpose-built application. A tracked new-business pipeline shaped around how agencies actually win work (enquiry, qualification, pitch, proposal, negotiation, won or lost, with a reason), so every opportunity has an owner and a next-action date; a light proposal-to-cost link so a pitch carries its servicing cost into the profitability view if it is won; and a clean record of win rate by source and by pitch type so the firm can stop pouring senior hours into pursuits it never wins.
What is automated, where AI helps, who signs off
The reliable spine
The reliable spine is the profitability arithmetic and the pipeline rules: fees against fully-loaded cost and pass-throughs per client, quotes built from the firm's own past actuals, and a tracked pipeline where every opportunity has an owner and a next-action date. The margin and the win-rate are computed, not estimated.
Where AI helps
AI reads the messy inputs the view depends on, pulling pass-through costs off vendor and platform documents and matching them to the right engagement, so the contribution figure is complete. It surfaces which retainers look under water; a person decides the re-price.
Who signs off
A named person signs off anything touching money, stock, a customer promise, a regulated filing, a payment, a price, a credit decision or a people decision.
What changes day to day
The under-water accounts surface and get re-priced at renewal or scoped down; new work stops going out under-quoted; the firm stops chasing logos to cover invisible losses and starts managing the book it has. No enquiry slips through; pitches are qualified before senior time is spent; proposals get chased instead of dying; the firm learns which pursuits are worth its time and stops bleeding unpaid hours into the rest.
Illustrative outcome
Re-pricing two or three under-water retainers and quoting from real actuals lifting blended margin by a few points of revenue in the first year, evidenced from the firm's own fee and timesheet records. A higher share of qualified pitches converted, and meaningfully fewer senior hours spent on low-odds pursuits.
Illustrative; final numbers come from your own data.
Path to the build
Book a free 60-minute call, then a free Blueprint on the firm's own records. Deep-dive and build, followed by run and govern so the workflow keeps paying back.
Related builds
A free 60-minute call. No cost, no obligation, just a clear read on what is worth building.