ANA/Decideware Survey: “Use of Data to Manage Agency Relationships”

In August 2016, the ANA and Decideware conducted a survey to better understand how companies are using data to manage agency relationships and how learnings from this survey can be applied to optimize client-agency performance.

Data as a force for good

• How frequently data is used to manage agency relationships
• If the use of data to manage agency relationships is growing, declining, or staying about the same
• If the use of data contributes to better client/agency relationships and improves client and agency efficiencies
• The importance of data for managing specific aspects of agency relationships. (Note: we looked into broad categories including media, billing/budgets, agency time/fees, production, creative.)
• What’s working well in terms of using data for managing agency relationships
• What’s not working well in terms of using data for managing agency relationships

Fig 1: 80% of respondents stated that they always or often use data to manage agency relationships

Some ways clients are using data to manage agency relationships include: agency performance evaluations, tracking of agency hours, copy/creative testing, benchmarking production costs, media efficiencies, and budget updates. Results of the survey showed that data is frequently used for managing agency relationships, with 80 percent of respondents indicating that they “often or always” use data to manage agency relationships. It also showed that use of data contributes to better overall agency relationship, improvement of agency efficiencies and internal efficiencies at the client's organization.  To summarize:

• Data is seen as a “Force for Good” in Client-Agency Relationships
• Data use in Media is critical
• Data in creative warrants more attention
• Data enhances transparency and strengthens relationships
• Data collection and storage needs to be centralized 

Fig 2: Graphs show how the use data to manage agency relationships helps improve relationship or efficiencies.

To view the entire survey  Click Here

For more information on Decideware, please contact us at sales@decideware.com.  You can also visit us at www.decideware.com. 

Richard Benyon is the CEO of Decideware, Inc. and co-founder of Decideware Dev Pty Ltd, a role that sees him work closely with executives in the world’s largest advertisers helping them manage the performance of, and relationships with their marketing and communication agencies.