Point of View: How the Agency Industry is Changing and What We’re Doing About It.

The Agency World is Changing…

You started your agency because you loved your craft—and for a while, it just worked.

But things have changed since you first started in the industry, especially these last few years…

• Margins are tighter.
• Clients demand more for less.
• Freelancers, offshore agencies and AI tools are redefining competition.
• Your team expects better work-life balance.

The rules of the game are changing fast, and it’s harder than ever to stay ahead and stay profitable.

You might find yourself going through a frustrating cycle:

• You win new clients (yay!)
• The team gets overwhelmed.
• You hire to keep up.
• Profitability drops.
• You’re back to hustling for more sales.

Just when you think you’ve finally outgrown these problems… the cycle repeats itself.

You might find yourself wondering “ Why does this keep happening?”

Why Running a Profitable Agency Has Gotten So Hard

You know you need to focus on your numbers, but it feels harder than it should…

You’re drowning in data spread across too many tools, your reports are confusing or inconsistent, and no matter how much time, energy, or money you throw at it, you still feel like you’re flying blind.

And let’s be honest—this isn’t why you started your agency.

But the truth is, the industry is maturing – and being good at your craft isn’t enough anymore. You’ve got to be good at running your business, too.

That means knowing your numbers, understanding what’s working (and what’s not), and making the right decisions to protect your margins.

But how are you supposed to do that when the rules keep changing?

• It’s not as simple as just billing for time anymore.
• The relationship between your projects, people, and finances is more complex than ever.
• Traditional agency management—where finance, operations, and sales live in silos—simply doesn’t work anymore.
• Raising prices isn’t enough; clients are tightening budgets. 

And worst of all, just when it feels like you’re getting a grip on things, you have to adapt all over again just to keep up.

The Old Way of Running an Agency Is Broken

The traditional way of looking at an agency was simple:

1. Sales gets the client.
2. Delivery does the work.
3. Finance tallies up the numbers at the end and tells us what’s up.

If only it were still that simple…

If you’ve been trying to solve this problem, you know that’s not how your business actually works.

The reality is, these things are interconnected in a constantly moving puzzle:

• What you can sell is tied to what your team can deliver. 
• Your financial budgets are tied to your sales targets. 
• How your team delivers impacts your margins and how much sales needs to charge.
• Not to mention, you have to consider overhead costs, utilization, internal responsibilities, pass-through costs, freelancers and so much more.

It’s a lot. 

Here’s the kicker: no matter how hard you try to line everything up perfectly, it won’t work.

• Data inputs are messy.
• Things are structured differently across departments and tools.
• Things are always changing—your team, your tools, your processes, your services…
• And trying to force everything into one “perfect” system? It just creates more headaches and confusion.

So, what happens? 

You spend more time fixing spreadsheets than fixing your business. 

You struggle to get clarity on why your margins are slipping—and what to do about it. 

Every time you need data to help you answer questions, it’s never up to date or accurate enough to be helpful.

So you go back to setting targets and making decisions based mostly on your gut.

Even when you do get answers, they feel temporary because the second something changes, it all falls apart again.

Sound familiar?

It’s not your fault, the old way of doing things doesn’t work anymore.

The New Approach: Profitability Management

We’ve spent years working with hundreds of agencies like yours, and here’s what we’ve learned:

Those that are thriving are embracing an Integrated approach to managing their business profitability.

An approach that doesn’t just track numbers—but connects them.

That gives you clarity on how your business works, why it’s performing the way it is, and what you need to do to improve.

An approach that embraces changes, messy data, and complex business models – instead of fighting them.

This modern approach is called Profitability Management.

Achieving Integrated Profitability Management takes three important ingredients:

1. The Right Data:
   Making sure your finance, delivery and sales tools produce the data you need, without creating extra headaches and compromises for your team.
   
2. The Right Framework:
   Making sure you have a simple set of metrics, the exact formulas for measuring them and a clear understanding of the relationship between those metrics and your business.
   
3. The Right Process:
   A process that ensures data hygiene, adapts seamlessly to change, and supports critical conversations with consistent cadences—even when things are messy and in flux.
   

These three ingredients lead to consistent clarity. That means confident decision-making, alignment as a team – and most importantly; results.

How Parakeeto Delivers Profitability Management as a Service

We’ve spent the last 6 years building a Profitability Management System to deliver exactly these three things, specifically for agencies & consulting firms.

It’s not just education. It’s not just consulting, it’s not just a proprietary process, and it’s not just innovative software.

Solving this problem requires all of those things, which is why we’ve combined them together into a complete system.

They come together in a three-step process, designed to get you the clarity you need in perpetuity.

Here’s how it works:

• Step 1 – Assess:
  We start by creating a model of your agency. It connects the dots between Finance, Delivery, and Pricing so you always know what your agency is capable of, and how changes affect all your critical KPIs.
  
• Step 2 – Predict:
  Next, we help you forecast the future, so you always know how changes to your team, pricing, or workload will affect your margins and capacity— long before they happen.
  
• Step 3 – Optimize:
  Finally, we install feedback loops so you know exactly how you’re performing against the plan. Our team takes care of the entire process, including building your reports, keeping data clean, and managing changes so things don’t break. We’ll even meet with you to review the data and coach you to success.

And here’s the best part: 

You don’t need perfect or complete data and systems to get started.

You don’t need to fire your accountant or your bookkeeper, and you don’t even need to ask them to change how they’re doing things.

You don’t need to replace your delivery and finance tools, and you probably don’t need to make big changes to how you’re using them either.

Our proprietary technology and process is designed to work with the tools and data you already have, and get you accurate and consistent reports even if things are messy and changing.

You Don’t Have to Do This Alone

This might all feel overwhelming… and that’s probably because it is.

Building, running, and maintaining a system like this on your own isn’t easy.

It’s why so many agencies struggle with it for years, leaving more profit on the table than they’re making in the process. 

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

With Parakeeto’s help, you can completely solve profitability management in a few weeks.

We’ll help you make sense of your numbers, protect your margins, and build a business that’s not just successful—but sustainable.

Because at the end of the day, you didn’t start your agency to fight with spreadsheets. 

You started it to do great work, build a great team, and create something you’re proud of. 

We’re here to take care of the numbers, so you can focus on what you do best. 

If that sounds interesting, we should chat.

There’s no obligation. If we’re not the right fit, we’ll help you find something that is.

You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.