FEATURE
One recent and very fundamental change for our agency has been the incorporation of a fractional CFO into our management process . The part-time CFO role for us helps us with planning a more detailed operational strategy and gives us much deeper insights into the financial health of the business . With a resource in that role , we are now measuring all of our key metrics against Reagan Best Practices numbers and we had the confidence to pursue a Best Practices nomination for the first time in our agency ’ s history .
WERE THERE THINGS THAT DIDN ’ T WORK ALONG THE WAY THAT HELPED YOU DEVELOP OTHER STRATEGIES ?
We have certainly been guilty over the years of all of the hiring pitfalls you commonly hear about . For instance , holding on to a new employee that may be a great individual contributor but just not a great fit for our organization . Other examples include hiring employees into a sales role and not creating as much accountability or structure as needed . In those examples , we just had to take those as some very expensive lessons learned .
Another strategy that we have found that does not work for us is setting and measuring goals without also measuring the much smaller contributing factors along the way . If for example you want to get your client retention percentage to a certain level , it ’ s great to keep a close eye on that metric but we also need to have processes in place to measure all of the smaller contributing factors such as successful client contact touch-points , NPS scores received and cross-sold policies .
One key benefit to having someone in an outsourced CFO role is their ability to hold the Executive team accountable to goals that were previously set . They helped us take goals we set as an agency and quantify those into monthly targets so we can make sure we ’ re staying on track throughout the year .
HOW MUCH DOES AN AGENCY ’ S CULTURE PLAY INTO THEIR MANAGEMENT AND OPERATIONS STRATEGY ?
An agency ’ s culture should certainly play directly into how their operations are run . It ’ s certainly not enough anymore to just say you have a culture of customer service or a team atmosphere without being very intentional on how the agency is running week to week to support those goals . If for example you say you have a team atmosphere , are employees empowered to collaborate together in meetings or do you have the technology tools and applications in place where they can communicate effectively ? Are you creating systems that reduce stress between employees during workflow transitions or are some of the legacy systems creating anxiety amongst the team ?
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... it ’ s great to keep a close eye on that metric but we also need to have processes in place to measure all of the smaller contributing factors ..."
WHAT ARE SOME EFFICIENCIES YOU HAVE BEEN ABLE TO IDENTIFY TO IMPROVE YOUR AGENCY ’ S WORKFLOW ?
Within our agency workflows , we have tried to be as purposeful as possible in making sure whatever task or process we are referring to is handled by the team that is best suited to that job . For us , that may
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JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2025
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