The client
Elevate Digital is a 24-person digital marketing agency providing SEO, PPC, content marketing, social media and website services to growing businesses.
As the agency expanded its client portfolio, managing profitability became increasingly difficult. Projects involved multiple employees, client approvals, deadlines and dependencies, while different services required different delivery processes.
Elevate introduced Cinqd to create a stronger connection between proposals, client work, team capacity and project performance.
Cinqd capabilities implemented:
- Proposals
- CRM and client management
- Task and project management
- Workflow automation
- Time and workload tracking
- Analytics and reporting
The challenge
Elevate was winning new clients, but increased revenue did not always translate into predictable project profitability. Proposals and delivery processes were managed separately, making it harder for project teams to maintain a clear connection between what had been sold and the work being completed.
SEO, PPC, content and website projects also required different workflows. Project managers spent considerable time assigning work, following up on overdue tasks and checking whether client approvals had been received.
When projects required more time than originally expected, the issue was sometimes identified only after significant additional work had already been completed. This made delivery overruns harder to control and placed increasing pressure on project managers.
How Cinqd helped Elevate connect sales with delivery
Creating clearer proposals and scopes
Cinqd helped Elevate introduce greater consistency into how services, deliverables and pricing were presented. Approved service structures gave sales and delivery teams a clearer understanding of what had been included within an engagement.
Once a client accepted a proposal, relevant information could move into the delivery process rather than requiring teams to rebuild the project manually.
Standardising agency workflows
Elevate created repeatable workflows around its core services. An SEO engagement, for example, could move through audit, on-page work, content, off-page activity and reporting, while website projects could follow discovery, design, content, development, testing and launch stages.
Tasks, responsibilities and dependencies gave employees a clearer understanding of what needed to happen next. This reduced the amount of manual coordination required from project managers.
Managing workloads more proactively
Cinqd gave managers greater visibility over current workloads and upcoming responsibilities. Instead of assigning work without a complete picture of capacity, managers could identify where employees were becoming overloaded and redistribute work where necessary.
This helped reduce bottlenecks and gave the agency a more realistic view of its delivery capacity.
Identifying project pressure earlier
Connected project and workload information gave managers greater visibility over engagements that were taking longer or requiring more resources than expected. Rather than discovering overruns at the end of a project, teams could investigate potential issues while delivery was still underway.
This created more opportunities to reallocate resources, address additional requirements and manage client expectations before delivery was significantly affected.
The results
Elevate reported improvements in project profitability, workload management and delivery consistency after introducing Cinqd.
Improved project profitability
Greater visibility over scope, delivery and workloads helped the agency manage project resources more effectively.
Fewer delivery overruns
Structured workflows and earlier visibility of project issues helped teams identify and address potential overruns before they became larger delivery problems.
Less project management administration
Automated and repeatable workflows reduced the amount of manual task coordination required to keep projects moving.
Better resource allocation
Managers gained a clearer view of capacity before assigning additional client work.
More predictable client delivery
Clearer stages, responsibilities and dependencies created a more consistent process across the agency’s core services.
Before and after Cinqd
| Before Cinqd | After Cinqd |
| Proposals and delivery managed separately | Clearer proposal-to-delivery continuity |
| Different teams followed different processes | Repeatable service workflows |
| Project managers assigned work manually | Structured task ownership and workflows |
| Capacity was difficult to assess | Clearer workload visibility |
| Overruns could become visible late | Potential delivery issues identified earlier |
| Profitability was difficult to connect with delivery | Greater operational visibility over project performance |
The overall impact
Cinqd helped Elevate Digital create a stronger connection between what the agency sold and how its teams delivered the work. Proposals, clients, workflows, tasks and capacity information became part of a more connected operating process.
Project managers spent less time manually coordinating everyday activity, while managers gained greater visibility over workloads and potential delivery problems.
The result was a more predictable approach to project delivery and a stronger foundation for protecting profitability as the agency continued to grow.
Could Cinqd help your marketing agency?
Cinqd brings proposals, CRM, projects, workflows, team capacity and analytics together in one connected business operating system.
Connect sales with delivery, standardise agency workflows and identify project pressure before it turns into costly overruns.
Book a demo to see how Cinqd can help your agency deliver more profitable client work.
