An agency that guarantees results for clients is a risky way to conduct business. Yet that’s exactly the promise Lead Express stands behind for its clients.
Lead Express is a full-service agency that services Australia, New Zealand, Asia, and North America. Over 15 years, they have become one of the most sought-after B2B agencies in the region. As a full-service entity, they have hundreds of projects at any time, including telemarketing, appointment setting, digital lead services, marketing automation, executive event management, and inside sales. Scaling the business had always been a company-wide goal, but they needed the right systems and processes to support it — defining unique workflows, unifying multiple communication tools, and elevating visibility into team capacity.
They needed a location to manage all their work, collaborate with clients, and track work progress to stay on target and under budget. Through Wrike, they found a solution that could adapt to each department, how they work, and their different workflows.
Multiple ‘aha’ moments
Automated project intake system
As an agency, the Lead Express team fields a lot of requests from external clients. The organization needed a work management solution that could streamline incoming requests and automate the project creation process.
“When a client submits a request form, that duplicates a blueprint which includes all the tasks and requirements for a standard campaign. Essentially, any kind of project we would work on, we’ve got a blueprint for it,” says Emily Trussler, Head of Digital at Lead Express.
When you stop and think about it, there’s no better way to accept work requests than a centralized system that feeds the correct team project details based on the form’s inputs.
Platform versatility
Prior to using Wrike, Lead Express managed work in spreadsheets and email. Not only are spreadsheets an inefficient way to track work progress, but they restrict collaboration and aren’t customizable to different workflows. They can also prove inaccurate if the data being compiled is corrupted or mistakes are made through inputs. Instead, the agency was determined to find a work management provider that could empower every team to work how they wanted. Standing behind their bold lead guarantees, they can’t afford to spend time managing increasing workloads using inefficient tools.
During their search for a better solution, they conducted an exhaustive review of multiple competitors, including Atlassian and Clarizen. Wrike was chosen because of our ease of use and ability to customize the platform for every team. Lead Express discovered that Wrike’s versatility enabled all its departments to set up the custom views or workflows they needed to do their best work.
“What I found with Wrike is you can use it in a number of different ways. You can have a Kanban, list, Gantt, or table setup. Different parts of different departments use those different setups. We needed a platform suited for all our different services, offerings, and teams. And Wrike was the only system we found to be a good fit for all of it,” says Trussler.
Enhanced resource management
With every team now working as one, Lead Express can access powerful reports on capacity, workload, and effort to help the agency improve its resource management. Wrike gives Lead Express more visibility, so managers can better balance workloads and support their staff.
“It’s definitely helped us manage the workload of our data team because we’re able to see how many projects they have assigned to them at any one time and how many tasks they have to do within a period of days. And then, the manager can easily see how many team members are actually needed to complete that number of tasks. Wrike has helped us realize the amount of work and the number of team members truly needed for certain projects,” says Trussler.
Lead Express + Wrike = “utopia”
After partnering with Wrike, scaling was finally possible. Each Lead Express department gets to work the way they want, considerably reduce reliance on spreadsheets, and embrace built-in resource management controls for better visibility into balancing team workloads.
“I would attribute Wrike to a large reason why we have been able to scale and grow as quickly as we have. The staff has a lot of confidence in the system, so we’ve been able to focus on other parts of the business that generate revenue. From the CEO’s perspective, that’s the biggest benefit of Wrike,” says James Cashmore, CEO & Head of Strategy at Lead Express.
Fulfilling the agency’s guarantee is now easier since they can focus on the work at hand instead of working within outdated tools and processes. Check out Lead Express' full story in the case study.
