Brands – and the agencies that support them – have become publishers. Global campaigns, localised assets and always-on content are now the norm. But while creative output has accelerated, the infrastructure behind it hasn’t.
Teams are expected to deliver at newsroom speed, yet many are still running on 2012 systems. Spreadsheets, legacy tools and clunky approvals can’t keep pace with modern multi-market demands.
A recent Campaign investigation found that 90% of creatives feel overworked – a crisis that’s barely budged since 2021. Last year, NABS logged a record 5,200 helpline calls. This isn’t just a stat; it’s a systemic failure – one that’s costing agencies both their people and their profits.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: it’s not a headcount problem. It’s a systems problem.
After 16 years in creative operations, I’ve partnered with global agencies, in-house studios, and production teams across every model: hybrid (fractional and freelance), centralised, and hub-and-spoke (where a central team sets strategy while local teams execute).
And across all of them, one pattern holds true:
Content scaled. Infrastructure didn’t.
We expect creative teams to operate like content factories, but they’re still planning in Google Sheets. Agencies commit to campaign timelines without forecasting delivery strain. In-house teams expand to meet content demand but their systems, workflows and governance often don’t evolve in step, leaving finance, ops and creatives scrambling to keep up.
You can’t scale creative output if your operational foundations are stuck in manual mode.
You can’t manage what you don’t measure
Let’s talk about timesheets. Everyone hates them. But most agencies still use them – and for many the data is garbage.
Time is logged late, guessed or massaged to hit targets. That flawed input breaks everything downstream: delivery forecasts, capacity planning and margin analysis.
And if your foundational data is fiction? So is your ability to make smart business decisions.
It’s no wonder agencies are starting to move on, shifting to outcome-based or deliverable-tiered pricing models. Anomaly, Mischief, Monks (S4 Capital) and WPP are among those rethinking how they track, price and deliver creative. These shifts haven’t been without challenges, but early signs point to better client alignment, tighter margins, and less friction internally and with clients. After all, it was Ogilvy and Shell Oil who brought timesheets into agencies back in the 1960s. Maybe it’s simply been a long, slow death.
For some agencies, scrapping timesheets entirely just isn’t an option – and that’s valid. In certain operating environments – particularly those shaped by financial oversight, cost attribution needs, or investor scrutiny – time data remains essential. This is especially true under private equity ownership, where agencies are often expected to operate as if preparing for exit within a three to five year window. In these cases, timesheet accuracy isn’t just admin, it’s strategy. Clean inputs drive clean insights, and ultimately, valuation.
But while timesheets may still play a role in financial governance, their relevance to pricing and value is rapidly fading.
And now, AI is accelerating that decline.
AI-generated content is accelerating that shift – breaking the link between time and value altogether. When copy, design or even video can be partially (or entirely) produced by AI, the idea of pricing by hours logged becomes meaningless. The shift is clear. From inputs to outcomes. From time to tangible value. In that context, the timesheet becomes less a tool for pricing and more a lens for optimisation.
And that makes the timesheet feel even more outdated: a relic of a world where human effort was the only metric that mattered.
Every scope, estimate, version – and yes, even timesheet – holds insight. Used well, this data becomes operational truth: surfacing inefficiencies, revealing patterns and guiding smarter decisions. Ignored, it leaves you flying blind.
Data standardisation
That’s where taxonomy and standardisation come in. Without consistent data structures across clients, resources, regions and deliverables, agencies can’t benchmark performance, model future scenarios, or uncover inefficiencies. It’s not just about better reporting – it’s about creating a foundation for growth.
These signals power margin visibility, benchmark effort and unlock AI-driven production planning. But, too often, agencies default to instinct, in a market that now demands precision.
That’s the contradiction at the heart of modern creative ops: pricing on outcomes, while still running on broken inputs.
The fix isn’t more people - it’s operational visibility
If you're productising content – through SLAs (service level agreements), templated packs, or retained deliverables – but you can’t see capacity, profitability or actual effort per asset, then you're scaling risk, not delivery.
Here at Paprika, we’ve seen what happens when operational visibility is prioritised, especially across creative ops.
One agency cut its month-end close from five days to just two - simply by connecting financial controls with real-time WIP (work-in-progress) and utilisation data.
“With the powerful import and custom report features, my current agency, operating across six global entities, has reduced month-end close from five days to just two,” says Hayley Finmore, group chief finance officer at Amplify. “All while gaining full control over our WIP and utilisation.”
The result? Faster decisions, clearer margins and a finance team freed from firefighting.
Operations doesn’t need to be a bottleneck. It should be the enabler.
That starts with:
Live visibility into capacity and workload
Overservicing alerts before they hit margin
Shared data across finance and delivery teams
Taxonomical consistency to benchmark and improve
Clean foundations for AI-driven forecasting and optimisation
Always-on doesn’t have to mean always-overloaded
Creative excellence shouldn’t come at the cost of burnout, inefficiency or margin erosion. If brands want to publish at scale, their agencies must be built for it, starting with the systems behind the scenes.
Operational clarity isn’t a “nice to have”, it’s the only way to keep the creative engine running without breaking it - or the people powering it.
Agencies that invest in operational systems today will outpace their competitors tomorrow because creative excellence thrives on clarity, not chaos.
Start by auditing your data.
If you can’t see the following in real time, your content engine is already at risk:
Capacity and utilisation
Margin and recoverability
Scope creep and delivery strain
Profitability by client, job, or deliverable
Workflow breakdowns or approval bottlenecks
Accurate time, cost, and effort data
Cross-team visibility across finance, ops, and creative
Clean, standardised taxonomy across all inputs
Because if your inputs are broken, your outcomes will be too.
The agencies that will thrive aren’t the ones with the biggest teams - they’re the ones with the clearest systems. Paprika helps you connect your finance, ops, and creative teams around one source of truth, so you can move from firefighting to future-proofing.
Caroline Johnson is global growth manager at Paprika Software.