Clockwork Manchester:
The Agency Process and Operations Forum

ABC Rooftop Dome, Manchester — Weds 19th April 2023, 1.30pm–5pm
(Looking for our London event?)

• Meet other agency owners (and operations leaders) making their business work better
• Hear real “warts and all” stories of process improvement
• Get inspired! Take away ideas to implement in your agency

If you are involved in agency process or operations, join us on 19th April for an afternoon of discussion and inspiration

For agencies, 2023 is a year of process improvement.

Clockwork is an afternoon where you can learn from – and be inspired by – other agency leaders who are making their agencies run smoother.

  • You’ll hear candid stories of failure and success from other agencies on a path to make their business work better.
  • You’ll also get to talk confidentially about your business with people who know what it’s like to walk in your shoes… because they’re currently doing it.
  • You can hear how other businesses are creating processes that work for them – and getting people (even creative people!) to stick to them.

Who you’ll hear from

How Can You Maintain Your Focus in Ops When
You’re Leading the Charge?

Glen Duncan could sense he was losing focus and drive in his role as senior operations leader at 383 Project.

“The only time you’ll ever really get any airtime is when things are going wrong,” he says.

For Glen, a big change came when he had the opportunity to study for an executive MBA – and this helped spur him on with newfound passion in his role to take a real look at the business, and keep his attention on ops fresh.

Read the full story.

“Why We Spent 18 Months Overhauling the
Entire Structure of Our Agency”

Bec Chelin’s agency, Manifest, was profitable and growing – but the leadership team wanted to take it to the next level.

They set about overhauling the entire agency over the course of 18 months, implementing the ‘elemental’ structure – a system that organises team members vertically across seven disciplines.

It seems to have paid off – maximising productivity, improving quality of work, elevating their client roster and boosting internal development too.

Read the full story.

“We Had to Overhaul Our Processes When
We Changed Sector”

When Web Presence decided to target a new niche – the charity sector – it became clear that things needed to change.

For Astra Newton, this meant overhauling two major internal processes – how they approached financial feasibility, and implementing tight and efficient time-tracking.

Now, the team have more time for personal development and creativity, they’re winning new clients in the charity sector, and it’s also boosted team morale.

Read the full story.

“Hard Conversations Led to Our Best
Period of New Business”

When the cost of living crisis exposed gaps in 43 Click North‘s cashflow, it sparked a transformation in the senior leadership team’s communication.

“We realised that we’d spent all our time focusing on how we deliver for clients – and not enough time on how we work with each other,” says Mike Ellis, the agency’s founder.

By transforming their comms, the business is now significantly more stable – and its culture has improved too.

Read the full story.

The Old Way of Doing Things Just Isn’t Cutting It Anymore”

As a Senior Solution Engineer for Scoro, Yassine Hamila is a problem solver by nature and has worked with over 100 agencies, helping them to increase efficiency, profitability, and consistency.

Yassine will be joining us at Clockwork Manchester to:

  • Demonstrate how to run your agency efficiently, thereby increasing profitability
  • Display and explain the KPIs of agencies similar to yours
  • Show the value in consistent input and insightful reporting

💬 These are the people we’re spotlighting so far. Like all our events, Clockwork is heavily participatory – when you get a ticket, we’ll capture your questions and include you in the afternoon.

Meet Other Agencies Improving their Process and Operations

Join us in the fantastic ABC Roof Dome to share how your agency is improving its processes and operations

Our venue is the thrilling ABC Roof Dome in Manchester. You’ll rub shoulders with 60 other Northern agency leaders, and be privy to fascinating (and confidential) process and operations case studies.

How are other agencies making their business work better? Expect to cover time tracking, over-servicing (good or bad?), knowledge management, agency profitability, team transparency (how much?), and more.

We will also hear from you (if you’re okay with it!) This event is heavily participatory. When you register for a ticket, we’ll capture your questions and endeavour to include you in the afternoon.

Hope to see you there!

Clockwork is sponsored by Scoro.

Scoro is an end-to-end work management platform designed to help agencies streamline their workflows, deliver consistently and boost profitability as a result.

By linking your Quoting, Projects, and Billing in Scoro, you can go from quote to cash in one platform – while seeing exactly how each stage impacts your profitability in real-time.

Get started for free. No credit card required.

Meet people who are interested in your story

Clockwork is an afternoon that will helps you get inspired, and meet other people you can learn from. We blend interactive talks and group discussion.

  • We dot you around the venue so you can interact – and we mix up the groups so you meet different people.
  • We poll you before the event to see what you want to talk about.
  • We make sure all the talks are original and interesting. We facilitate questions and reflections throughout.

Clockwork – FAQs 💬

Q: What actually happens on the day?

We start the event at 1.30pm, so try to arrive by 1.15pm.

The afternoon’s format is pretty simple: you will spend some time hearing from guests with interesting stories that you can learn from, and you will also spend some time in small groups discussing your journey with like-minded agency leaders.

The event is hosted by an Agency Hackers facilitator who makes sure that everybody with something interesting to say gets heard. (We poll attendees before the event, so we know who to ‘pick on’ on the day.)

We will serve tea, coffee and sweet things to keep you going, but please eat a sandwich before you arrive. The schedule doesn’t leave us time to serve lunch, unfortunately.

Q: Who will I hear from? Who are the speakers?

The people you’ll hear from are all agency leaders with interesting stories to tell about operations and process.

We also decide who to spotlight based on the information we capture in the weeks before. (Look out for our emails!)

We will publish the line-up a few weeks before, but mostly we hope that you will trust us to select interesting folk from our audience. We find that the people who choose to attend our events are overwhelmingly on fascinating journeys that will resonate with you.

Also, the ‘talks’ aren’t really linear presentations. They’re more like structured case studies, with lots of questions and reflections from the audience.

You could potentially call them ‘fireside chats’, but these are not rambling cosy conversations. They are planned and structured. We put a lot of work into researching our guests, out of respect for your time.

Q: Who can attend?

This event is for anybody in your agency who cares about process and operations.

That might be the founder or owner, it might be the Head of Operations, or it might be somebody else.