Digital consulting — software, articles, and glossary
Resources for digital agencies and digital consulting boutiques: PSA with SEO/Ads retainers, articles on pricing models and AI, operational glossary. For 5 to 200-person agencies.
Retainers and projects coexist badly without written rules
A digital agency usually runs monthly retainers for ongoing service alongside projects with a fixed scope. Each model is controlled differently, and mixing them in the same view is the usual reason margin shows up late and wrong.
On a retainer, what needs watching is consumption against contracted capacity, with a counter visible to both sides. On a fixed-scope project, what decides is the estimated remaining effort, not the hours already spent. And out-of-scope work needs to be recorded when it happens, not argued about on the invoice.
- Included and consumed capacity visible on every retainer
- Remaining effort reviewed fortnightly on fixed-scope work
- Out-of-scope requests recorded with their impact
- An alert when the agreed thresholds are crossed
An agency's margin is lost in small details
In digital services margin is rarely destroyed in one go. It erodes by accumulation: unplanned revisions accepted to preserve the relationship, internal meetings nobody books time to, coordination work that grows with the number of channels, and a seniority mix heavier than the one that was sold.
The last is the quietest. A project sold with one senior and two juniors that ends up delivered by two seniors bills the same and leaves considerably less, and that difference appears in no report unless somebody compares the planned composition with the actual one.
- Comparison between the roles sold and the roles assigned
- Included revisions per deliverable agreed in writing
- Coordination time booked and visible
- Margin per client as well as per project
