⚙️ The Agency Process and Operations Conference
• Are you on a journey to improve your agency’s process and operations?
• Join us for a day of inspiring talks and case studies, to help you decide what will help you put your best foot forward in 2024.
Thursday 24th April 2025 – 9.30am to 5pm
The British Library, Kings Cross
Operations should be the engine that powers your agency – but it sometimes feels more like pushing a broken-down car uphill:
- Processes are caving under pressure
- Team sizes are fluctuating every year
- Internal comms are confusing
This is where Clockwork comes in. At this conference we will be looking at how to make operations… more operational.
We’ll be hearing from agency operations leaders about how they are using project management tools, AI and the best ways to make processes easier, and how to continuously adapt to a changing industry.
Meet your speakers…
Keeping Operations Steady Through Acquisition
Paul Simms realised he had two weeks to decide: let it all collapse, or risk it all and acquire the business.
The cracks had been showing for a while. Private equity deals had fallen through, finances were stretched thin, and the group Reflect Digital was part of had invested heavily in senior leadership, expecting funding that never arrived.
Eventually, the numbers weren’t working, and the business was heading straight for liquidation.
“It was riskier not to do a deal,” says Paul.
In this session, Paul will be sharing all about Reflect Digital’s journey so far, and how he has kept operations afloat – despite last minute acquisitions. [Read More]
Scaling Your Agency Without Losing Control
Keeping an agency working can feel like juggling a hundred things at once.
You’re tracking projects, managing cashflow, keeping clients happy – and at the end of the month, you’re turning a profit. But there’s a tipping point for every agency, where it’s hard to break out of the chaos.
If you’ve ever felt bogged down by too many tools – tracking the wrong numbers, or struggling to scale efficiently, Scoro can help you focus on what really drives profitability.
“At the start, you’re just looking at cash flow – what’s coming in, what’s going out. But as you grow, it’s not enough. You need to start understanding project profitability and, eventually, team performance, so you’re making proactive decisions rather than firefighting.”
Harv Nagra from Scoro will be talking about the different stages of business maturity and how agencies can make sure they’re tracking the right things at the right time.
The Fair Growth Framework
“People wouldn’t know when to approach us.”
Zoë Blogg could see the problem at Reboot: great talent was coming in, but keeping them wasn’t easy. Employees felt stagnant, retention was dropping, and salaries were being inflated in a reactive scramble every year.
She saw the same cycle play out over and over. Annual reviews left employees waiting 12 months for promotions, line managers weren’t sure how to navigate pay conversations, and every year, salary budgets were blown in May without a real strategy for career growth.
“To combat that, I built out career pathways for every single role – each one with quarterly reviews. We ask, ‘When was their last pay rise? When was their last promotion? Anyone we don’t want to lose? Are they being paid enough?’”
Now Reboot sees:
- Improved retention – because of clearer expectations around career growth
- Better financial planning – ensuring salary adjustments align with agency performance
- Proactive talent development – identifying and supporting rising leaders early
At Clockwork, Zoe will break down her Fair Growth Framework – the system that structured promotions, reduced unplanned salary inflation, and improved retention at her agency.
Reinventing Agency Operations Through Holistic Metrics
“Utilisation by itself doesn’t tell enough of a story – it doesn’t tell us exactly how we’re performing.”
Ryan McNamara saw the problem. Tracking time and tasks is a big task – but it wasn’t giving a full picture of how client projects were really performing. Were they running efficiently? Were budgets being spent wisely? Were clients actually happy?
So he made a change.
Rise at Seven’s new system combines hard data with real client relationships – bringing together project efficiency, time spent, budget burn, and client satisfaction into one holistic tracking model.
The team now has a single source of truth across every account. That means more control, more visibility, and faster, better decisions. Stand-ups have been stripped back, reporting takes minutes, and the whole team can spot issues (and opportunities) early.
At Clockwork, Ryan will break down the model, the mindset shift behind it, and how it’s helped Rise at Seven turn complex operations into something refreshingly simple – and more profitable.
Operations Surgery
It’s all well and good going to sessions to learn new things.
But what if you have some burning questions you need answering by an expert? Don’t worry, we’ve got you.
The operations surgery allows agency and ops leaders to dissect their agency’s problems with the help of a room of other ops leaders. People can request to be spotlighted beforehand, by submitting some information about their problem, and we’ll also pick on a few people (who are feeling brave) out on the day.
Avoid Project Ruining IT Catastrophes
One click.
That’s all it takes for your agency’s carefully built processes to come crashing down around you.
A fake invoice. A dodgy email. A phishing link that someone – maybe even you – falls for. And suddenly, you’re locked out, your data is compromised, and your biggest client project is ruined with no real explanation.
Ralph Harrison says, “Trust is good – but not from an IT perspective.”
Scammers and hackers don’t announce themselves. They don’t wait until you’ve got the time to deal with them. And they don’t just happen to the elderly – they hit fast-growing agencies, stretched teams, and anyone who’s thinking, “We’ll deal with security when we’re bigger.”
In this session, Ralph from Cubit, will be diving into the biggest security mistakes agencies make, and how to bulletproof your operations against IT disasters.
Being Lean Can Be BETTER For You
“Going from 25 people to 10 isn’t as scary as it looks.”
According to Jake Cawdery, it might just be the smartest move you make as an agency.
Trimming down might sound daunting, but Jake says: “You start to see that you can work so much smarter and faster, with the people you have.” Less headcount doesn’t have to mean less impact – It actually means you have more clarity, better efficiency, and a team that’s, “very commercially minded in how they work.”
In this session Jake will be deep-diving into why chasing ‘vanity metrics’ can lead you down the wrong path, and why real success comes from focusing on “what the clients are going to see… the outcomes, the outputs, the work you’re delivering, and the profits.”
If you’re looking to make big changes about the size of your agency, this is the session for you. Jake will be sharing what he’s learnt from Curated’s transition into a more sustainable model.
Right People, Right Roles: Boost Your Teams Efficiency and Reduce Stress
“People just assume their team structure is working – until everything starts crumbling around them.”
In an agency, it’s really easy for roles to bleed together.
The strategist is making client decisions, the PM is filling in the gaps, and junior staff are running around ‘keeping the machine running’ without doing anything truly meaningful.
Mark and Joanna have seen it all: teams frustrated because they’re stepping on each other’s toes, agencies setting unrealistic targets based on default structures rather than ones that have been purpose built, and businesses losing top talent because expectations weren’t clear and progression plans weren’t laid out.
In this session, they’ll break down how defining roles properly can transform team efficiency, set accurate goals, and actually reduce stress levels. If your team has ever struggled with role clarity, accountability, or making realistic targets that fit your agency’s structure, this is the session for you. [Read More]
The Future of Internal Comms – A Design-Led Approach
Internal Comms is changing – and it’s changing fast.
“It’s right on the precipice of a huge paradigm shift,” says Emma Bridger. “AI is going to make a lot of what internal comms would do previously, redundant .”
It’s not enough to send out generic all-company emails, and one-size-fits-all updates. You need to be getting behind design-thinking, personalisation, and putting people at the centre of your communications.
Emma says, “When you get it right with your people, it unlocks everything.”
But how do you actually do that?
In this session, Emma Bridger will break down how agencies can apply design thinking, audience personas, and customer experience tools. to revolutionise the way they engage their teams.
How Operations Leaders are Using AI To Transform Their Agencies
AI can be an unstructured playground. A playground that feels like it only has space for creative teams, researchers (and people looking for LinkedIn posts.)
But for Charlotte Collier, AI needs to be a strategic tool for operational efficiency and innovation.
As Operations Director at Finally, Charlotte has taken on the role of “the AI whisperer for the business”, finding ways to embed AI across the agency.
Instead of letting AI spiral out of control, she made sure she put guardrails in place. For example, she’s worked with legal teams to create “10 AI Golden Rules”, ensuring AI use is responsible and legally compliant.
She says, “We changed our company vision at the end of last year – to be human-centric and creatively backed by AI.”
Now, Charlotte is leading the charge in using AI not just to save time, but to unlock entirely new ways of working.
If AI still feels outdated for operations in your agency, Chalotte will show you how to get your team excited and use it with purpose, structure, and real impact. [Read More]
Growing your Ops Team
How do you grow an operations team that actually works – without piling on complexity or losing control of the work?
With years of hands-on agency experience, Ben Willmott will be sharing all on how to find the right people for your ops team.
“The job description and the CVs are actually quite low on the priority list – it is much more about their operational skills, how they manage people, and their approach to different types of challenges.”
He will be discussing when to invest in senior roles vs. build from within and how to manage handovers from founders to ops teams.
In this session, Ben will be sharing what it really takes to build operational support around you as an agency leader, starting from the moment you realise: “I’m still doing too much.”
More to be announced soon….
Meet other people improving how their agency runs
Clockwork is a day that will help you get inspired, and meet other agency process and operations people that 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.
It’s aimed at agency leaders and their process or operations leaders – but anybody can come.
- Our venue is the Knowledge Centre at The British Library. We have the entire building, so you will explore the venue interacting with different agency leaders. 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.
Five Rooms of Learning and Inspiration
Clockwork – FAQs 🤖
Q: What actually happens on the day?
We start the event at 9.30am, so try to arrive by 9am.
The day’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 a great lunch to keep you going throughout the day.
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 agency process or operations.
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 mainly for agency leaders and operations leaders – but it’s potentially of interest to anybody interested in making their agency run letter.
Basically, anybody can attend if you think it looks up your street.
