Three to four people's worth of time, without hiring.
35-person UK agency, 40 to 60 active clients, healthy growth. The growth was stalling, but not because of demand. The team was running fifteen clients on the capacity required for forty-five.
The situation
The reputation was strong. The revenue was healthy. The growth was real. And yet the leadership team felt the agency was hitting an invisible ceiling.
When we listened, we found 30% of the team's capacity was disappearing into manual administrative work that nobody had ever stepped back and questioned.
The complication
The Digital Marketing team was spending 100+ hours a month, the equivalent of two and a half full-time staff, compiling client performance reports from five-plus platforms. The Media and PR team was sending 200+ personalised emails a day by hand. Onboarding required two weeks of manual knowledge transfer because nothing was searchable.
The CRM had 3,000 to 5,000 dormant contacts generating no revenue. Internal communication was 200+ emails a day and ten-to-twelve weekly meetings, mostly about coordinating the work rather than doing it.
The growth had not stalled because the agency had run out of opportunities. It had stalled because the operational tax on every new client was too high.
The question
The leadership team had been told the answer was either "hire more people" or "buy a tool." We thought neither was the right place to start. The right place was a redesign of where AI should compound, applied across the highest-tax workflows.
The answer
We picked six high-impact workflows and built across them, with the SIE underneath as the secure layer for client work.
- Unified reporting dashboard. Automated data pulls from Sprout Social, Google Analytics, Meta, LinkedIn, into client-ready reports with a single click.
- AI-powered internal knowledge hub. Searchable documentation that replaced the two-week manual onboarding; 70 to 80% of routine questions self-served.
- Client-specific Custom GPTs. Fine-tuned on brand guidelines, past content, and tone-of-voice. Generate first-draft briefs, social posts, blog outlines.
- Automated media outreach. Intelligent pitch generation at scale with follow-up tracking.
- AI-powered CRM segmentation and nurture. The dormant database, categorised and re-engaged automatically.
- Automated proposal generation. Pre-loaded with case studies and pricing, drafts tailored to each prospect.
Outcomes
Six months in.
- 80+ hours per week reclaimed across teams (3 to 4 FTE equivalent)
- Client reporting time reduced 65%: 6 hours to 2 hours per client
- Content creation accelerated 45%: brief-writing 1-2 hours to 20-30 minutes
- Media team saved 4 to 6 hours per person per day; outreach volume 3x without headcount increase
- Onboarding time cut 50%: 2 weeks to 1 week
- Time reconciliation 85% faster: 3-4 hours/week to 30 minutes
- Dormant CRM reactivated: 18% response rate (industry average 8 to 12%); £120,000+ early pipeline; 22 active opportunities
- Proposal generation 60 to 70% faster: 4-6 hours to 1-2 hours
In six months, we have reclaimed the equivalent of 3 to 4 people's time without hiring anyone. That capacity is going back into strategic work, client service, and growth.— Managing Director
Sound like a wrestle you recognise?
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