OTM
A Colorado digital marketing agency radically transforms their workflow and culture after partnering with Louder Than Ten
When OTM reached out, the digital marketing agency was growing, but it was also hitting several operational issues. After completing the Digital PM Foundations course, OTM’s Chief Creative Officer, Val Kailburn, knew a custom engagement with Louder Than Ten was the answer. This is the story of how the next nine months transformed OTM’s PM operations, workflows, and accountability structure, and the rippling effects they are still experiencing over a year later.
Organization type
Digital Agency
Based in
Fort Collins, CO
Company size
23 employees
Website
oldtownmediainc.com
Program
Training, consulting, coaching
20% pricing increase
76% net profit increase
(from 17% to 30%)
30%more revenue
(with 10% project reduction)
Growing pains
OTM had hit a ceiling. After growing from five to 15 employees, their existing relaxed operational systems weren’t working the same. Things began to break.
They needed to split the team into pods. OTM’s leaders couldn’t afford to oversee every detail on every project any longer. The team needed to be autonomous, accountable, and effective while building a more cohesive process and structure. Project quality was suffering.
“We had started to split into pod-based delivery. So instead of the ‘one team one dream’ model, we started to split up. It was the first time in our company where executives didn’t have complete oversight over everything. Before that, our Chief Creative Officer oversaw everything and our Chief Strategy Officer oversaw everything. When we went to the pod structure, they took a backseat. They were still reviewing things but they weren’t in every single meeting.
As the front end of our work started to change, how we started projects needed to get a lot better. Specifically around project onboarding. Bringing a lot more intentionality to that stage was certainly key.”
Our operational findings
Every custom engagement with Louder Than Ten digs deep into an organization’s unique process and pain points. With our CEO and lead consultant, Rachel Gertz by their side, the OTM team broke down their entire project lifecycle and made candid discoveries like:
Missing info in the sales cycle was negatively rippling throughout the entire project lifecycle
Clients that weren’t well-aligned on the Client Fit Matrix, were pulling OTM away from their revenue goals (even when projects looked profitable on paper)
They were servicing way too many clients, creating a reactive approach that led to scope creep and quality issues
Missing knowledge gaps between teammates was causing unnecessary (and expensive) back-and-forth delays
Gaps in the QA process were costing more money than they could recoup
Mistakes during project launch and no accountability framework meant the team couldn’t create a clear forecast or have autonomy to do their work
There weren’t any repeatable criteria for project success
Clients didn’t have insight into their own growth or marketing opportunities. Strategy and delivery were disconnected
“The ability to work through the unique processes that we have for everything we do. Every agency is built differently, manages its work differently, and has different kinds of metrics.
What we struggled with were ‘out of the box solutions.’ We tend to take a process and change it fairly significantly to work for us. The ability to work with Rachel’s flexible and adaptable approach was key.
Rachel’s approach is fabulous: very flexible, and adaptable. Outcomes-focused. Inclusive. She’s an incredible facilitator. And we’ve worked with quite a few, maybe a dozen over the last few years. She easily ranks in the top two or three.
She has an ability to empathetically understand the client’s side — what they’re going through, what change would look like for them, and how they would go about changing. She also knows the amount of political or social capital that would be needed to make these changes.”
After identifying key areas for improvement, the team spent the rest of their sessions making actionable changes to address existing issues and cultivate project and people health. Learning and change happened simultaneously.
Results and highlights
Improved sales and onboarding experience for clients that accounts for risk and ROI from day one
Increased net profit from 17% to 30% through better project scoping and estimation
Converted to an autonomous pod structure and team members that have the skills to lead and generate business value for clients
An improved QA process that encourages senior team members to pass on skills to more junior members
The ability to answer the questions, “are we okay?” and “are we going to be okay?” at all times
All projects now go through a thorough team driven scoping and project planning phase
Increased project value by 20% without reducing the win rate
Reduced the number of projects in the shop by 10% but generated 30% more revenue
“Project management is really — this is a weird analogy — but I think it’s almost like the centerpiece in a mind map. Everything else, like how you productize services, how you deliver services, how you’d scope services, anchor back into PM.
When you start to map your project management out, when you start to look at the cascading changes, how much your agency operations have to change.
Scoping is part of what we went through with Rachel. It’s like the second or third item. We took her on a walk through our approach. We needed to change scoping to support new engagement options. We had to build that whole system and change how we scope and who scopes. We ultimately ended up with one person doing pricing to segment out people’s biases. So, this came out of the project management piece, but ultimately impacted the sales side, too.
Scoping and onboarding were the two biggest items, no doubt. We changed how we scoped and it changed our margins.”
The future
These days OTM is stronger than ever and still implementing the changes we helped them identify and strategize when we started. They’ve grown and are implementing a specialized consultative approach to serving their clients in a way they know will help them scale sustainably while helping them generate more business revenue. Their team is happier and their leaders get to spend more quality time with their families. PM is OTM’s super glue.
“We’re starting to look at like the next layer, which would actually be how do we start to structure dedicated time blocking and things like that. We’ll actually do the second wave of our process implementation at the end of this year.
Project management was so anchored in agency operations. Agency operations span everything from sales estimates all the way through profitability on the talent and team structure. It was in project management we found our project anchor.”
