Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

Just in time for summer, we're rolling out a brand new look and feel—shaped by your feedback—alongside some helpful updates to the way you plan, quote, and manage work. Whether it's building out project plans before staffing is confirmed, locking in exchange rates that match your finance team, or a cleaner Task Details experience on the horizon, this month's releases are all about giving you more control and less noise. Let's dig in!

Most marketing agencies don't have a tool problem. They have a "too many tools" problem. I've seen it over and over across Teamwork.com customers. An agency starts with a project management app, bolts on a time tracker, and adds a separate invoicing tool. Then nobody can tell whether a retainer is profitable until the quarter ends. According to Teamwork.com's Sprint to AI Report, 58% of professional services teams juggle three to five separate tools just to manage their work.

I've spent the better part of a decade managing marketing campaigns for agency clients, and here's what I know for sure: the tool you pick to manage that work matters more than most people think. Pick the wrong one and you're duct-taping spreadsheets to Slack threads. Pick the right one and your team actually ships work on time, on budget, and without the 11 p.m. "where's that deliverable?" panic.

Agile project management tools are software platforms that help teams plan, execute, and deliver work in short iterative cycles. They support sprint planning, Kanban boards, backlog management, and real-time progress tracking, giving teams the flexibility to adapt as priorities shift.

I spent the better part of a decade juggling client projects across spreadsheets, email threads, and at least three tools that never talked to each other. One Monday morning I realized I'd burned two hours just pulling together a status update for a single account. That was the moment I knew the tools were the problem, not the process.

I've spent the better part of a decade inside professional services operations. First running delivery at agencies, then joining Teamwork.com to help people learn about the platform I wished I'd had. The pattern I kept hitting was the same: a CRM held the client record, a spreadsheet tracked the budget, and a project tool held the tasks. None of them talked to each other. Every Monday morning started with a frantic reconciliation ritual that ate hours and still left blind spots.

I get invited to compete against custom builds almost every week now. Not against competitor vendors. Against a team of developers, or increasingly against an AI coding tool and a founder who is good with prompts. It usually starts the same way. A services firm has a workflow that no off-the-shelf product covers perfectly. So they get a quote from a dev shop, or they spin up a build themselves over a weekend.

I've spent enough years in client services operations to know what happens when teams skip straight to buying automation tools. They automate the wrong things, or worse, they automate a broken process and just break it faster. This guide covers the strategic approach that actually works: how to audit what needs automating, prioritize the highest-ROI tasks, and build a roadmap that sticks. You'll also see where Teamwork.com fits into the picture.

Every professional services team I've been part of has had the same argument at some point: "Why aren't timesheets getting done?" Before I joined Teamwork.com, I spent years managing delivery for agency teams. The answer was always the same. Manual time tracking is painful, so people avoid it. Automated time tracking fixes the root cause by removing the manual work entirely. This guide breaks down how it works, what methods are available, and how to choose an approach that actually sticks with your team.

I spent the best part of a decade in client services, and have seen firsthand how resource planning can make or break your team and projects. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that most project delays do not start with bad estimates or unclear scope. They start with a resource plan that looks fine on paper but falls apart the moment two projects need the same person on the same day.