With everyone now working in Clients & Profits, "We can immediately obtain accurate job costing information and financial statements," Frank says. They now use Clients & Profits for estimates, trafficking and scheduling, purchase orders, and financial accounting. "It's such a relief to finally obtain information that I can depend on with Clients & Profits instead of piecing information together from time cards, receipts and invoices," Frank says. He now relies on the Job Billing report to get invoice details and the Job Progress report to keep tabs on unbilled and billed job costs.

Results!

Just as Cartel Creativo is accountable to its clients, Clients & Profits helps make its staffers accountable to the agency. Clients & Profits has brought departments closer together, Frank says. "With information always available in the Clients & Profits database, people know that entering their information into the database helps someone else get their job done."

Frank found Clients & Profits' Snapshot reports confirmed productivity, profitability, and other financial results that were too time-consuming to compile manually, so they didn't get produced quickly or often enough.

Cartel Creativo was able to identify their major revenue sources, which prior to Clients & Profits, they had only best guesses. The Gross Margin by Client and the Client P&L Analysis reports helped confirmed their gut feelings about which types of clients were most profitable. "Being able to see where our business comes from helps us realize the main sources of our net income," Frank says, "so we can focus on maintaining and growing these types of accounts."

Fewer missed deadlines

For the production department, reports such as Work To Do made Cartel Creativo realize they needed to hire a traffic coordinator to manage the shop's growing workload. They filled the position in 1999 and the agency is already running more smoothly with, Frank says, fewer missed deadlines. And they're still winning impressive accounts. In June 2000, Cartel Creativo partnered with Atlanta's Images USA (who also uses Clients & Profits) and Chicago's Leo Burnett USA to win the U.S. Army's four-year, $380 million recruiting campaign.

With Clients & Profits in place, Cartel Creativo can still grow and keep things manageable. "Clients & Profits is at the core of our agency's business side," Frank says. "It tells us where we're succeeding and where we can improve. Everyone in our shop relies upon Clients & Profits. We couldn't live without it."