Welcome seekers of knowledge! And special thanks to our partners, Promethean, Punchlist and Parallax for making this research possible. Recently, 124 Bureau shops completed a survey sharing what tools they use to run their agency. The respondents ranged in size from solo flyers to shops with over 200 FTEs. The distribution was pretty even with the majority falling in the 10-24 range with 50+ a close second. Now let’s take a look at the winners, shall we?
Design Tools
Both Figma and Adobe CC are vying for supremacy here with Figma taking a slight lead. Many shops use multiple design software tools with the average shop using 1.8 design tools. Of those shops that used two or more of these design tools, the most common pairings were between Figma and Adobe CC.
Issue tracking tools
While Jira is by far the most commonly used tool, almost a third of shops don’t use any kind of issue tracking software.
Accounting & Invoicing Tools
Quickbooks was the clear winner here with Harvest coming in second. There were a decent number of shops using either Quickbooks or Harvest plus some kind of custom Google Sheets or Excel addition.
Capacity planning and staffing tools
While a third of shops don’t use tools in this category, the majority of them were smaller firms. All of the 50+ employee shops use some kind of capacity planning software.
Chat tools
Unsurprisingly, Slack dominates the chat space with almost 90% of the survey respondents using it and very few using more than one solution.
Advertising and analytics tools
Google products are obviously taking center stage here with almost 90% of firms using Google Analytics. Some of the non-Google software mentioned were Fathom and Hubspot.
Hiring and applicant tracking tools
Almost half of the shops surveyed don’t use a hiring or applicant tracking system. Of those that do, LinkedIn Recruiter was the most popular. BambooHR was a common “Other” option and ranked evenly with Breezy.
Human Resources and payroll tools
Half the respondents use either BambooHR or Gusto, while a fifth don’t use anything. It was significantly more common for smaller shops to not use this type of software. Every shop with 50 or more employees uses some solution for this while 92% of shops with 25-49 employees do. 79% of shops in the 1-24 employee range use one of the below tools and this falls to 57% for freelancers.
Culture and feedback tools
Most shops don’t use any kind of culture or feedback software. Of those that do, the use is varied across a number of different tools. The “Other” category below included common mentions of Lattice, 15Five, Friday, and Team.
Project management tools
The project management software space is fairly evenly split between the top five tools. This is another space where custom spreadsheet solutions are used in conjunction with other tools to augment their functionality. Common mentions in the “Other” category were: ClickUp, Monday.com, and Notion.
Video conferencing tools
Zoom is the most commonly used tool in this section with a decent percentage of shops using more than one video solution.
Marketing tools
Mailchimp and Hubspot are the most common tools here but a full quarter of the respondents don’t use any kind of marketing software. Of those who used some kind of solution for their marketing, there were very few who used more than one tool.
Customer relationship management tools
Hubspot and Pipedrive were the most frequently used CRM tools but, as with marketing tools, a significant number of respondents don’t use any CRM solution.
eSign tools
While most shops use some kind of eSign solution, there’s little agreement on the best option with a three-way tie for second place.
We could use your DAMM help
We’re working on a crazy ambitious goal of getting 1,000 agency owners to respond to our Digital Agency Maturity Model survey.
Once complete, the DAMM report will provide owners:
An opportunity to align on growth/maturity goals that matter most
Education around the proven best practices used to achieve those goals
Clarity around:
What they are doing well
What needs to improve
Where they should focus their energy in the near term
What challenges are on the horizon that they should be aware of, but do not need to focus on yet
So if you can find the time, let’s level up the whole dang industry!