As an Agency it is essential to have accurate, up-to-the minute information on performance and profitability. Yet one of the major difficulties facing agencies today remains the easy and efficient control of job costing.
Data Valley's Production & PR Management system is designed not only to provide a client friendly job costing and control system, which is comprehensive, flexible and immediately familiar to any one working in the industry, but also to provide the management information required to run your business.
Designed to operate in any type of company from a Full Service Agency, Public Relations Consultancy, Marketing Services Company, to a Graphics Studio; Data Valley's Production System can maintain any number of jobs and handle projects or fee-paying clients on retainer charges. Jobs can be run individually or as part of a Campaign which can incorporate many production jobs and media schedules (if the Media System is available) to provide a higher level of information and control plus an immediate overview of the entire campaign.
In addition the Production module integrates with Standard Microsoft products such as Word & Excel. All standard documentation can be tailored to incorporate your companies' image.
Having established the job, you may use Data Valley as a planning tool to prepare costing for a job. It is likely that you have produced a similar job some time in the past, in which case why start from scratch? Any previous job may be saved as a template to form the basis of your new costing, this can be modified as necessary and then used to rapidly create a new client proposal which can be emailed or faxed to the client, or printed out for conventional mailing. The style and layout of your estimates is entirely your choice.
Purchase Orders can be raised by the system and easily matched against estimates on the relevant job. When incoming purchase invoices are received they too can be matched against the estimates or orders ensuring total control of the agreed costs and your budget.
Jobs will always show accurate up to date financial information.
Ensuring that all chargeable time, expenses and purchases are correctly allocated to the relevant jobs is obviously vital when deciding what should be invoiced to the client. Data Valley keeps control over all costs incurred and will show you precisely what is billable at any time, and equally important, items which may have been missed such as late purchase invoices are now a thing of the past.
House items - often missed when billing - such as scans, cromalins, ISDN time, copies, faxes and postage, are set up on the system so that you may capture and recharge them quickly and easily.
Data Valley's Time Sheet is designed for simplicity, speed and accuracy allowing users to enter time against jobs just by clicking on a job and activity. Notes can be added and house items (such as ISDN charges) can also be added directly to the job at this stage.
Time charging is extremely flexible. Time is charged at rates set by you for each activity or individual. Charge-out rates can also be established by individual client, campaign or job and will automatically override the agency default rate when time is booked to that client.
Data Valley has a very powerful invoicing system giving you complete flexibility in the way you generate your invoices.
Account executives may wish to select their own jobs, view what can be invoiced and then make alterations before the final version for the client is agreed. At the press of a button they can produce a draft invoice run for all their jobs.
Alternatively invoice a specific job by allocating costs incurred on the job, or prebill / advance invoices can be raised prior to any costs being allocated to the job.
Fee schedules can be set up to handle regular monthly billings or Campaign Invoices can be raised to bill the client for multiple jobs / media schedules on a single invoice to the client.
Full integration with the Accounts software is maintained and the Sales, Purchase and Nominal Ledgers are automatically updated with Production information at the discretion of the accounts department.
Data Valley includes numerous reports and statistics all giving you a clear picture of the agency's activities including profitability and work in progress. Each report can be selected by a variety of criteria including client, account exec, job, activity or department.
Work-in-progress reports also provide secondary information on accruals and estimates outstanding against each job or client giving you a much better indication of your true forward cash requirements. The WIP is 'Aged' to clearly indicate possible problem areas.
All reports can be printed to screen, to a printer or exported to excel (or alternative file format) for data manipulation.
Management Information when you need it! Displayed how you want it!
A fully integrated, graphical planning module which interfaces directly with all existing Data Valley Systems. This comprehensive management and planning facility significantly aids the scheduling of time and events.
The Traffic Planning module enables the production department to plan and monitor the progress of a job through the agency, keeping track by departments and/or individuals. This tool is also useful for account executives wanting to see the current status of their jobs.
As well as helping with the management of time-critical projects, this information can be used to determine 'loading' on a specific department (usually the studio or creative department) for any period of time. This can be invaluable for indicating the need to use freelancers on a specific job/project or perhaps to highlight that a particular area is under/over resourced.
For your Planning Meetings, work sheets can be produced for any department, individual or for the agency overall clearly showing what has to be achieved within any given time scale and the time and resources allocated to complete this.
Each department or individual can be provided with their own sheet showing what is required each day for the next week, month or indeed any period you wish. These reports can also be adapted for a client progress meeting or for any account executive visiting a client to review timings / loading by Client or by Job.