Company Name: Agencia People
Location: Madrid (Spain)
Industry: Marketing
Company Size: <50
Odoo Users: <30
Hosting: SaaS
Apps: Accounting, Sales, Purchase, Projects, Timesheets, Documents and Inventory
Agencia People is a marketing and advertising agency in Madrid with more than 40 years of experience. The agency was born from the merger of the brands PDM - Marketing y Publicidad Directa, Cubbe, and Twot, giving rise to People, a reflection of its evolution in the first person.
At Agencia People, they like to simplify processes, which is why they remove filters to humanize marketing in the digital age. Through this philosophy, they approach each project, always following their values of professionalism, proactivity, closeness, freshness, and commitment. The agency offers digital, strategic, promotional, and piece-by-piece marketing services.
The Agency before Odoo
Before implementing Odoo, the company faced significant challenges related to the fragmentation of processes and information. After several failed attempts with different ERP solutions on the market, they were unable to effectively integrate their operations. This lack of unification created information silos, making it difficult to access key data for strategic decision-making.
In particular, the absence of a single source of information negatively affected financial and accounting analysis, as well as the analytical processes necessary for management and planning.
“The need for a robust, flexible, and truly integrated platform became critical to moving toward more efficient, data-driven management.”
Like so many other companies, Agencia People used a wide range of different solutions to manage the business. Among them were obsolete systems that did not meet their needs, and they tried unsuccessfully to implement another solution that never managed to consolidate their processes.
As a result, most operations had to be carried out manually using Excel, and all communication was done via email. As is often the case in these situations, this led to data duplication, difficulty and slowness in obtaining important information, and delayed strategic decision-making, which is key to the company's growth.
For all these reasons, they decided to change all these operations and choose an ERP in which to centralize all their information and activity, one that could adapt to their needs and be scalable so they could grow together. After evaluating Ekon and Holded, the People Agency finally decided to put its trust in Odoo.
Getting started with Odoo
To implement the system, Agencia People worked closely with an Odoo consultant, following the Quickstart implementation methodology. They divided the implementation into six phases.
First, they defined the processes to keep them as standard as possible, avoid unnecessary customizations, and take full advantage of Odoo's Cloud format. Next, the Agency created the team responsible for the implementation on their end, seeking commitment to the project. Thus, the company's CEO, CFO, and CTO joined the team.
In addition, they had to promote the cultural and operational change that this would entail internally, as there were internal processes that had to be adapted to take full advantage of Odoo's potential. Next, they cleaned up all the data that had to be imported into Odoo.
Finally, they assigned each module to a manager and implemented each module in a strategic order, prioritizing those that would have the greatest impact on day-to-day operations and long-term decision-making. They implemented the accounting, CRM and sales, purchasing, projects, timesheets, documents, and inventory modules.
These implementations always bring challenges with them. In the case of Agencia People, the biggest challenge was the cultural and operational change throughout the organization. The process required training and a change in mindset. In addition, data migration was a major undertaking, as they had a large amount of historical data and had to identify and discard obsolete information, leaving them with a clean database that showed the most realistic information possible.
In the case of Agencia People, the biggest obstacle at the beginning of the implementation was understanding the potential of Odoo in its standard version to avoid customizations. In this regard, both the assigned consultant and their account manager were able to streamline the process and guide them through the implementation.
This has brought about a considerable change in overall operations. They have gone from working with fragmented processes to adopting a unified and scalable way of working with Odoo. Thanks to this, they now have a team adapted to work on new processes.
“Today we have centralized information, more agile processes, and a solid technological foundation for future growth.”
The improvements have been non-stop, from operational efficiency to decision-making. Execution and decision-making times have been reduced, operational errors have been decreased, traceability has been improved, and full integration has been achieved. In addition, internal communication has improved considerably, even though it was not considered one of the main objectives of the switch to Odoo.
“I would definitely recommend Odoo. It is a robust, flexible, and scalable solution... In addition, the support of the Odoo team was key to a successful implementation.”
Agencia People is more prepared than ever to offer quality service, with efficient communication with its clients, unbeatable operational times, and ready to scale to the next levels.
