Agency Best Practices: Tackling the Challenge of Over-Servicing

Deltek WorkBook

January 3, 2024

If all the resources at your agency are always busy, but you’re not seeing that hard work reflected in your cash flow, you may have been over-servicing your clients. Over time, working without proper compensation will eat away at your agency’s profits and can lead to employee burnout. Want to make over-servicing a problem of the past? Here are some resolutions to start in the new year:

Resolution 1: Identify the Cause of Over-Servicing

The best way to tackle over-servicing is to determine the root cause of the problem. Here are three areas to investigate:

  1. Client communication: sometimes, over-servicing starts with miscommunication with the client. Do both the client and your agency clearly understand the brief? Has your agency overpromised on the project, or has the client shifted the scope of work over time?
  2. Resource management: are the right resources assigned to the right projects? If the employees with the wrong skillset are working on a project, it might take them longer to meet deadlines. Are any resources under capacity that could be added to keep the project on time?
  3. Finance management: start with the original project estimate, was it correct for the scope of work? Or are the issues of cash flow – delays in invoices or processing payments?

Resolution 2: Eliminate Over-Servicing and Scope Creep

Once you’ve identified what is leading to over-servicing at your agency, you must take proactive steps to stop it from happening again.

  1. Project management: establish clear and regular status updates to prevent over-servicing from becoming problematic; this will also help ensure the team sticks to deadlines. Use reporting to check the data on which projects are over time or over budget.
  2. Client relationships: build clear communication with clients, starting with a clearly defined brief and outlining a plan for regular check-ins to prevent scope creep. Consider ending relationships with clients that are overdemanding and unable to stick to the brief.
  3. Resource management: review your process for scheduling resources, tracking utilization, and assigning projects to under-utilized employees.

Resolution 3: Fine Tune Your Agency Operations

Beyond eliminating over-servicing, now is a good time to fine-tune your agency operations. Here are three areas to prioritize:

  1. Change management: Evaluate the best way to approach change management to minimize the impact of client adjustments to the brief or shifts to resources within your team. 
  2. Reporting and visibility: check to make sure you’ve got clear visibility into your resource management and timekeeping. Do you have reports to track the utilization of your resources and the hours spent on each project? Ensure you have clear visibility into agency profitability and reporting on finances and your resources. 
  3. Streamline processes: Lastly, look into streamlining your operations within a single agency management tool like Deltek WorkBook. Gain better control and visibility over your agency’s finances, improve performance tracking, and enhance your agency’s efficiency and profitability, all with Deltek WorkBook. 

Start your year off by tackling the problem of over-servicing and see what Deltek WorkBook can do for you in this online webinar.

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