Workflow vs Process: Which Matters More for Your Creative Agency?
Discover workflow vs process for creative agencies. Learn the key differences and how to optimize both for growth.
Adetola Rachael Iyanuoluwa
Process is the formal “what to do” blueprint, and workflow is the practical “how we actually do it”.
It's the difference between the theory and the practical way you work.
In this article, I'll break down what workflow and process are for creative agencies and how ManyRequests can help you work smarter.
A workflow is the sequence of activities that team members follow to complete a task from start to finish. Essentially, it's the day-to-day flow of tasks that happens repeatedly.
For example, your designer always creates the visuals for new content when the writer is done, and they're assigned this task via email or a project management tool.
Your workflow will show how tasks flow between team members, how they do the tasks, and how they share information on the project.
For this, you can use ManyRequests. ManyRequests has features such as customizable request forms to collect necessary information from your clients about a project:
These details can help you know exactly what you need to do at each phase. For example, in this screenshot, we ask a series of questions like what the project’s timeline is, the client's preferred tone of voice, etc.
You can also customize the form based on the different services and project types you offer:
ManyRequests has a project management solution that allows you to delegate work to team members, set due dates and priority levels so they can properly prioritize tasks.
Once you assign a task, your team members get an email notification to view requests.
Each request also has visual indicators (To Do, In Progress, Pending Feedback, Revisions Needed, Completed, Scheduled) to track the task’s status.
Learn more about ManyRequests here and sign up for a 14-day free trial to see how it works.
For a content creation task, the workflow could include:
A process is your agency's big-picture system. It covers your entire approach to achieving business goals, including all the rules, methods, and interconnected activities that helps deliver client value.
Let's go back to the content creation workflow example.
You’ve created the content for your agency's blog, but that's only one process for scaling the business and onboarding new clients.
There are still other processes to achieving these goals, including client acquisition, client onboarding, recruiting talents, and managing projects.
Processes are frameworks that combine different workflows to complete a project that's part of the bigger picture.
A process typically:
Tools like ManyRequests helps manage your agency's process through its white label client portal. ManyRequests, for instance, provides complete customization of client portals to look like your agency's branding. You can change your domain name, add agency's logo and branding to everything including your emails.
This is how the platform looks for one of our clients, Hey Digital:
And this is what it looks like for ManyRequests:
While they're different, none works without the other. Your workflow needs to be in shape for your process flow to stay organized. However, they serve different purposes for your agency.
These are some of its key differences:
Processes are goal-oriented. This means they focus on achieving broader business objectives and outcomes, like onboarding new clients, improving organic traffic for a client, or scaling your agency.
Workflow, on the other hand, focuses on more singular tasks, like creating SEO-rich blog posts or a questionnaire to onboard clients based on the service needed.
Workflows are a series of repeated and detailed tasks about assignments and deadlines. Processes combine multiple workflows across different departments to reach one goal.
For example, your overall process for a web development project might include client onboarding, discovery, strategy development, design, development, testing, and launch.
Within that process, a specific workflow would detail exactly how the design phase happens (from wireframing to getting client approval).
Workflows are more adaptable and can be optimized regularly for efficiency. Processes are more stable, and they change less frequently.
For Process, management focuses on business goals and client outcomes. For workflow, team members focus on daily tasks and handing off these tasks to the next stage.
Although they share some differences, workflows and processes work together in synergy to grow your agency.
How?
An all-in-one project and client management tool can help improve how you approach clients work and manage your team members.
Our client, Flowout, also had problems managing their project workflows. They were handling many small requests and big projects and needed an efficient way to handle all these projects without disrupting their workflow.
ManyRequests’ Requests feature helped them organize and manage active projects better. They were able to productivize their service with our Service builder feature, and create briefs with customizable service requests forms.
According to Luka Mlakar, CEO of Flowout:
Repetitive tasks happen in 94% of every company, and they slow team members down. 70% of business leaders say they spend 45 minutes - 3 hours on mundane tasks that could be automated. This cuts into their productivity and time that could be spent doing more important work. Here are five tips to change that:
Document the average turnaround time for tasks in your agency. This would require you to visualize what your work looks like from when the client sends in a request to when your team head delivers the content.
A blog post creation request may have an estimated turnaround time of 3 weeks, but in actuality, it takes over 5 weeks to brief your writer and go through rounds and rounds of edit, before it's ready for client approval.
If you're unsure of how long your turnaround time should actually take, you can ask on industry platforms.
Lily Ugbaja, head of content marketing at Spicy Margarita, was curious about how long it takes to create a draft with a writer, from briefing to editing.
You can also calculate how long it should take based on past projects and how long it took your team to complete them.
Create detailed intake forms for every client to capture all information upfront. A standardized creative brief will help your team get the right information for every task.
ManyRequests uses customizable forms to get information from clients when they purchase your services. These forms can be converted to briefs for your team to create and deliver client requests.
A perfect workflow follows clear steps: your team lead needs to create briefs before writers can write the piece. Your writer needs to submit a draft before the designers can create visuals for the content, etc….
Tracking the stages helps you know the task stage, and which team member is handing over to who next.
Workflows can get jumbled when you have different streams of communication. You talk to your clients on LinkedIn and through email. Your team communicates with Slack, and between these apps, information gets lost, tasks get mixed up, and you have a messy workflow.
You can use a centralized platform like ManyRequests to handle all these. This lets you collect project details, discuss with the client, and manage active projects with your team members. Learn more about ManyRequests to maximize it.
Workflows and processes are both essential to agency success. Processes give your agency a strategic direction to achieve a bigger goal, and a stable and optimized workflow executes the smaller tasks behind the scene.
The best agencies integrate both to improve their operations and work smarter with their clients and team to scale their business.
ManyRequests helps you handle all these, and you can get started with a 14-day free trial. Create a portal, onboard your clients and teams, and see how it makes work easy.
