How OH Partners Improved Cash Flow, Efficiency, and Agency Visibility

With over 100 employees in multiple offices across the Southwest, OH Partners is one of the fastest-growing marketing agencies in North America according to Inc. 5000. Their full-scope of services includes research, strategy, creative, branding, media planning and buying, digital, public relations, and social media campaigns. As a result of their growth, OH was struggling with their workflows, cash flow, and overall visibility. Alex O'Connor, former Director of Data Solutions for OH Partners explained, “Overall we needed to provide our CFO and leadership team with consolidated business metrics and quick time analysis. Additionally, some of the integrations we had in place caused the unnecessary duplication of work related to media billing, and we needed to reduce the time spent doing data entry or manual updates.” In short, OH was looking to:

• Increase visibility for leadership
• Streamline resources
• Simplify media billing
• Automate mundane manual processes

Improved Cash Flow & Media Buying Efficiency

Because OH is a full-service marketing agency, they do all their media buying and planning in-house, leveraging FreeWheel's Strata cross-media campaign stewardship platform. Unfortunately, back-office complexities required substantial data entry and manual updates between the media and finance teams, creating extra work and accounting errors. However, OH was able to eliminate these inefficiencies and improve cash flow with a new integration between Deltek WorkBook and FreeWheel's Strata platform. This true API integration means WorkBook is more tightly integrated with Strata than any other ERP solution, allowing users to manage workflow and media buys more efficiently than ever before. With this integration in place, OH Partners has been able to:

• Remove duplicate data entry time for estimates, POs, and vendor invoices for both media and accounting teams
• Create an overall view of the entire approved media plan, reducing the need for additional future data entry
• Be more confident in agency financial data

A Consolidated View of The Entire Agency

As an established agency, OH had an existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, however they were struggling with the workflow of their previous software. According to Alex, "We needed to evolve so that we could better utilize our resources, understand the state of our resources, streamline accounting and provide a more consolidated view to our leadership team.” After evaluating different ERP options, OH landed on Deltek WorkBook. Created by agency veterans, WorkBook is a total agency management system that helps firms achieve digital transformation, manage a distributed workforce, and build a foundation for business growth. WorkBook helped provide OH leadership a consolidated view of resource utilization, and project effectiveness, allowing them to be better positioned to make crucial decisions.

Faster Online Proofing

With hundreds of employees and customers spread across multiple states, OH Partners' creative review and approval process was often time-consuming. So, in addition to WorkBook, OH implemented Deltek ConceptShare. As a result they were able to streamline their online proofing process, allowing OH to get better feedback and faster online proofing approvals for their creative work.

The Real Proof is in the Pudding

Just a few months after going live, OH is already seeing encouraging results after implementing WorkBook and ConceptShare, including:

• Reduced time to close month end
• 100% time compliance
• Improved scope forecasting and tracking
• Advancements in resource allocation