Their week, before
Assessment · 14-person marketing agency
Four people spend the last week of every month rebuilding reports by hand.
Briefs get written from scratch. Nobody knows how many revision rounds a project has had until it's over budget.
1 · Executive summary
The outcome. Reporting becomes a dashboard that is already up to date. Briefs start from a draft. Approvals chase themselves.
15 hours a week, across the team
2 · Impact against effort
Every opportunity we found, placed by what it returns and how hard it is to start.
| Quadrant | What sits there | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Quick wins | Reporting, briefs, approvals, notes | Start here, this week |
| Major projects | CRM migration, custom client portal | Phase in after the wins |
| Fill-ins | Inbox triage, content repurposing | When time allows |
| Ignore | A model trained on your past work | Not worth it at your size |
3 · Six quick wins
| Opportunity | Tool | Hrs/wk |
|---|---|---|
| Automated monthly client reporting | Looker Studio + Zapier | 5.0 |
| First-draft briefs from the discovery call | Claude + Fathom | 3.0 |
| Approval chasing on a schedule | Zapier + Slack | 2.0 |
| Meeting notes written for you | Fathom | 2.0 |
| Inbox triage and routing | Gmail filters + Zapier | 1.5 |
| Repurposing long-form content | Claude | 1.5 |
4 · The recommended stack
| Tool | Per month | Setup | Hrs/wk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zapier | $29 | 3 hrs | 7.0 |
| Claude Pro (3 seats) | $60 | 1 hr | 4.5 |
| Fathom | $19 | 20 min | 2.0 |
| Looker Studio | Free | 4 hrs | 3.0 |
| Slack workflows | Included | 1 hr | 1.0 |
| Gmail filters | Free | 30 min | 1.5 |
5 · Your four-day plan
- Monday — FathomConnect it to your calendar. It records and writes up every call from tomorrow.
- Tuesday — ClaudeSet up three seats and paste in the brief template from section six.
- Wednesday — ZapierBuild the approval chaser. The exact steps are in the appendix.
- Thursday — Looker StudioConnect your two ad accounts. Reporting stops being a monthly job.
6 · After the quick wins
- A shared brief library, so nobody writes the same scope twice
- Automated project health checks against budget and revision count
- A client-facing dashboard replacing the monthly deck entirely
7 · The numbers
15 hrs
returned each week across the team
$108
total monthly tool cost
9.5 hrs
one-off setup, spread over four days
8 · Next steps
- Work through the four-day plan.Most of it is done inside a week.
- Book your free 20-minute call.If you want any of it talked through.
Get your own
Same structure, your business, your numbers. Answer the questions when you have twenty minutes.