When looking for a new software system to be used in your company (starting from an operating system, a word processor or spreadsheet programme, an email and web client, through to complex project management or even accounting systems), there are some questions to ask independent and across the lines of all of these different solutions: What hardware do we use…
Part 1 – New Starters in our Organisation We have previously looked at the importance of training our staff and how to set up an internal training programme. The next question is – how do we assess competence and progress along the training pathway? In this article, we are going to look at the training and assessment of new starters…
Having a fully integrated job costing and accounting system, that works perfectly in one country, should make it relatively straightforward to employ it in other countries as well. After all most modern operating systems are able to provide a more or less seamless international and multilingual functionality on the touch of a few buttons. In particular for a multinational company…
Having a fully integrated job costing and accounting system, that works perfectly in one country, should make it relatively straightforward to employ it in other countries as well. After all most modern operating systems are able to provide a more or less seamless international and multilingual functionality on the touch of a few buttons. In particular for a multinational…
Marketing budgets in retail and other industries are often the first ones to be frozen, when credit is harder to get by and consumer spending slows down. As a result, companies in the creative industry find it more difficult to obtain jobs. In such times when business stagnates or is on the brink of a downturn, investing in a…
1) Reporting Flexibility and User Acceptance: Many integrated job costing and accounting systems in use in the creative industry offer great value to the organisation by streamlining the project management from recording the first client brief, generating budgets and quotes right through to closing the job bag and handling the billing. There is however one aspect in many such…
With more and more of the business in the creative industry taking place in a global dimension, many creative companies now have to handle foreign currencies as well as their local currencies. Traditionally this is often done in a manual ad-hoc way where up to the time when documents for foreign clients or suppliers are produced everything is based…
For most agencies in the creative industry time is the main generator of fees and revenue. Although a number of companies also have some income from buying and recharging third party costs and in particular start-up companies might utilise freelancers* for their work, in the majority of firms staff time creates the biggest value on a project. When implementing…
Many creative agencies have completely separate systems to manage their jobs and to do their accounting. This is partly due to how the companies are set up with regard to their IT system and the compatibility of accounting software: Apple Macs are widely used for the studio’s creative work whilst for it’s project management either PCs or Macs tend…
Many agencies have made the first step and invested in an integrated project management and accounting system. When the system is first implemented all members of staff are trained on the functions particular to their role. As employees move on and new employees join, the new starters usually have a handover from their predecessors in how to use the…