Red hot digital

With a growing reputation as a hot digital shop, the Creative Department's web programming services are the fastest growing part of their business. In fact, they are growing so quickly, they're looking for new digs and new talent -- as long as they aren't AEs. "Not that we have anything against AEs," Steve says, "but they're a roadblock between the client and creative, "a link that is key to the shop's award-winning work.

In fact,using Clients & Profits is the shop's first foray into something non-creative. "We'll need to hire a full time bookkeeper-accounting person eventually," Steve says "..But right now the shop is staffed strictly with creatives, with Clients & Profits chugging away in the background while they kick out great advertising." We let good creative be the way we keep getting good work," Steve says. Once they've struck good relationships with new clients, the Creative Department parlays tech work into print and broadcast efforts. "It 's an easy decision for clients to hire us for other work," Steve says,"once they've seen our dot-com work."

The Creative Department is developing expertise with music, animation, sound, and video, then applying them to technology's quickly expanding limits. The shop handled internet work for Cinergy, a power company serving Ohio,Kentucky, and Indiana; Cincinnati's famous Busken Bakery; Options, a division of Batesville Casket Company, the largest casket manufacturer in the world; and intranet work for Procter & Gamble.

To keep tabs on the profitability of this fast growth,Steve set up their web development services as a separate department in Clients & Profits. With a unique set of data, the Creative Department will be able to track and evaluate the profitability of their fastest growing division.

"That's an exciting thing," Steve says, "and something we would never have conceived without Clients & Profits."

Eight dollars a day

Creative problem-solving permeates the business,even the way they tracked hours before Clients & Profits. The Creative Department used to keep time in a Quicken database that they set up just for tracking hours. Every staffer had an account, and one dollar equaled one hour;everyone had to put in eight dollars a day. The system worked, but it meant juggling information from one database to another. Now, everyone tracks time using an online time card which, since every staff member uses Clients & Profits all the time, is available at the click of a mouse. It's tremendously easier,although Steve admits it can be tough to motivate the staff to get their time cards done. Time cards are always done within five days, "which is pretty good," he says, since time keeping is a non-creative task. "To ask a bunch of creatives to do non-creative things, they're not going to say, 'This is great!' But they haven't complained."

Before Clients & Profits,billing was a big headache. Steve ran reports from the psuedo-time accounts in Quicken, then matched the hours against jobs, tracked down costs that were committed to a job but not yet billed by the vendors,type up the invoice, and then cross his fingers and hope nothing had been missed. With Clients & Profits, all of a job's costs are collected in one place -- an electronic job jacket. Now, the clients' invoices are more accurate and are mailed out quicker. "Many times we were losing money we should have billed because it was too much of a hassle to rebill a client after a missed cost turned up," Steve says.

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