Creative web agency
Client: Romain & Inès, co-founders of a web agency specialising in website design and digital strategy for SMEs. A studio in Bordeaux, founded in 2019.
Background: management software for a web agency
The agency runs around twenty active projects at the same time, with a range of business models:
- Fixed-price projects (website creation, redesigns, campaigns)
- Maintenance and SEO contracts on a recurring monthly subscription
- Time-and-materials services for key accounts
- Frequent subcontracting (freelance developers, photographers, copywriters)
Before Dirigeoo:
- Projects tracked in individual Excel files, with no consolidated view
- Advance, interim and final invoicing handled manually by Romain
- No way of knowing whether a project was profitable before it closed
- Subcontracting costs allocated as a whole, with no breakdown by project
The problem
- Projects run at a loss: several fixed-price projects over budget with no margin warning
- Late invoicing: payment milestones were missed for lack of automated tracking
- No overall view: impossible to aggregate the agency’s profitability in real time
- End-of-month stress: frequent gaps between costs to pay and client receipts
The Dirigeoo solution
- Advanced project management
- Allocated budget vs actual spend per project in real time
- Automatic alert when a budget is exceeded
- Subcontracting costs allocated directly to the project concerned
- Automated milestone invoicing
- Invoices triggered automatically at defined stages (deposit, delivery, balance)
- Built-in tracking of outstanding amounts and reminders
- Agency profitability dashboard
- Gross margin by project, by type of service and by client
- A consolidated real-time view of revenue, costs and profit
- Multi-stream cash flow management
- Recurring subscriptions, time-and-materials work and fixed-price projects kept separate in forecasts
Results
- Project profitability visible: in the very first month, 3 loss-making projects were identified and restructured
- Faster invoicing: not a single milestone missed since roll-out, +18% in receipts
- Informed pricing decisions: quotes now include the true cost of subcontracting
End-of-month stress eliminated: cash flow is anticipated 60 days ahead
Testimonial
“We thought we were profitable. Dirigeoo showed us that two projects had been costing us money for months. We revised our pricing and our margin rose by 11 points in one quarter.”
Romain & Inès — Agency co-founders