Company:
Horton Lantz Marocco
Seattle, Washington

Business:
Full Service Design Agency

Staff:
45 full-time

System:
Clients & Profits Pro
Macintosh
Windows

Download (210k)

orton Lantz Marocco is an agency on fire. In the year 2000 alone the agency's staff grew by 30%, and now they're up to 45 staffers. They've continued to hire two employees every month, and have even resorted to bringing onboard their freelancers and interns full time. But they don't hire just anybody. Instead, only interesting, creative people need apply. Their recruiting motto? "Don't hire anyone you wouldn't want to have lunch with!"

Long-time creative partners Tom Horton, Dale Lantz, and Craig Marocco formed their own agency in the early '90s after some 20-plus years of working together at various local shops. After adding Don Low as a partner, this advertising supergroup has attracted and retained a phenomenal client list (a few of whom have worked with Horton, Lantz, Marocco, or Low for decades). "We believe our versatility is what brings clients to Horton Lantz Marocco," says Dale Lantz. "What makes them stay is the breadth of our experience, the quality of our work, and good-old-fashioned, hard-hitting results."

Replacing MYOB

Horton Lantz Marocco is lucky enough to have clients knocking on their door, and they're growing their staff fast to keep up with the work. The agency originally bought Clients & Profits Classic in 1996 to replace both MYOB and a manual traffic system (they've since upgraded to the more powerful Clients & Profits Pro). Since then, Clients & Profits has kept everything running smoothly throughout the shop's tremendous growth, the partners say, especially in keeping everyone in the agency communicating about clients and jobs.

With Clients & Profits, staff members now always know what tasks to do, when the work is due, and what's going on with jobs. It's helped the agency stay on top of its work while managing its exponential growth.

Avoiding last-minute crunches

Jim Morris is the traffic manager - the guy responsible for making sure everyone knows what to do and when it's due. "I use the Work-to-Do report faithfully," says Jim. "I usually begin my day by printing it for the next seven days, then prioritize whatever needs special attention to avoid the last minute crunch as much as possible." When Jim joined Horton Lantz Marocco, the shop wasn't fully taking advantage of the traffic and scheduling capabilities provided by Clients & Profits. Jim spent some time "catching up" by entering the shop's open jobs in Clients & Profits so he could print a complete set of production reports. Now he just needs to add new jobs as they happen. Jobs in production are updated continuously as the work progresses. "Reports such as the Work-to-Do make my job a lot easier," he says.

Account managers use Clients & Profits to check on their jobs' status daily, right from their own desks. "The account managers absolutely love Clients & Profits," says marketing manager Erin Keaty. "They can see that we're halfway through a project as far as time is concerned and only a quarter through the budget," she says. They also use the Clients & Profits creative brief to describe a job's creative, production and strategic goals, as well as estimates, job schedules, and the job diary to see the changes and progress made on a job. Since anyone can use Clients & Profits to track jobs (with the right access privileges, of course), no one wastes time tracking down the person who worked on the job to check a production schedule or review the job's costs.

more