Company:
Strategies
Costa Mesa, California

Business:
PR/Marketing Communications

Staff:
28 full-time

System:
Clients & Profits Pro
Macintosh
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or most of the 1980s, Shay Stockdill, Tara Stoutenborough, and Linda White worked together in a traditional, creative department-driven agency. It wasn't a bad business model. But Shay, Tara and Linda -- all entrepreneurs at heart -- wanted to try a different approach. "Strategies' goal was to focus on the client's marketing goal," Tara says. "We wanted to be strategically driven, to develop a wide range of tactical skills for implementing those strategies, and above all, to be flexible."

An unusual concept at the time

Today, many companies talk about brand development and strategic planning. When Strategies was launched in 1991, it was a pretty unusual concept. And it was a risky time to start an agency since roughly half of them in Southern California were closing as clients tightened their budgets in a deepening recession. But with Strategies' flexibility and willingness to work with corporate staff communications pros, the team filled a niche.

Corporations hired Strategies for just the services they needed, and Strategies got their foot in the door. "When we started, we were able to thrive because we were flexible," Tara says. "Both large and small companies could try us out, then give us more work once we developed a solid relationship."

"Strategies started on Shay's kitchen table with one computer on it," Tara says. They had to unplug the fax to talk on the phone in the "computer room" that was Shay's kitchen. A month later they moved into their own office space. The economy improved then boomed, along with Strategies' client base. They added staff and knocked down walls to accommodate their growth.

Juggling spreadsheets

On the business end, Shay juggled multiple Excel spreadsheets, pulling information from one sheet to the next to create the reports she wanted. "Coming from an agency background, I knew how all of our financial reports should look," Shay says. "I did my best using Excel to set up the columns and link the spreadsheets to create them."

The complex, time-consuming process still fell short of meeting the agency's needs. "Our accountant wanted accountability, but we kept running into limits with Excel," Shay says. And shuffling data "drove our bookkeeper bonkers," she says. "It was just a nightmare."

By early 1991, they knew they needed something better. After evaluating several software packages to replace the Excel maze, they settled on Clients & Profits in 1993. "It was a big step for a small company, but we intended to grow and needed a really professional program to get us there," Shay says.

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