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CASE STUDIES
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2025
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Performance Marketing Agency
Building a delivery operating system in ClickUp for a performance marketing agency
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OVERVIEW
About the client
The client is a 35-person performance marketing agency, with 28 people on the delivery side. They work with e-commerce and SaaS clients across several markets.
They were already using ClickUp, but mostly to keep tasks in one place. It was not giving management a clear view of workload, team capacity, or client profitability. A lot of delivery decisions still depended on manual coordination rather than actual data.
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CHALLENGES
A delivery system without structure, visibility, or reliable data
On paper, the agency’s billable utilisation was 23%. In practice, that number was hard to rely on. Part of the work never got logged properly, and time tracking varied from person to person.
The workspace had grown without a clear structure. Client work and internal work were mixed together. Tasks were missing key fields. Time entries were not reviewed before showing up in reporting. Because of that, managers could not plan capacity properly, and overload usually became visible only after deadlines started slipping.
What wasn’t working:
Billable and non-billable work sat in the same space, so utilisation data was distorted;
Tasks were often missing estimates, owners, start dates, and due dates;
New work came in through chats and verbal requests, which delayed task creation by 1 to 3 days.
How do we turn a task manager into a delivery system the business can actually use for planning?
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SOLUTIONS
Split client delivery from internal operations
We separated the workspace into two clear parts: Client Delivery and Internal Ops.
Client work became billable by default. Internal work stayed non-billable. Each client got a dedicated folder with a standard structure: backlog, current work, intake, and reporting.
This gave the team something they didn’t have before: a clean line between work that generates revenue and work that supports operations. Once that split was in place, utilisation numbers started reflecting reality.
Make tasks plannable before work starts
We rebuilt task creation rules so every task had the minimum data needed for planning.
Each task now includes required fields such as client, service line, role, work type, engagement type, budget hours, and time estimate. We also set a simple baseline: if a task has no assignee, estimate, start date, or due date, it is not ready for work.
That changed how managers used ClickUp. Workload view stopped being decorative and started helping with actual planning. It became easier to see who was overloaded, where there was free capacity, and which deadlines were already under pressure.
3. Replacing manual coordination with structured intake and time tracking
Intake:
All new requests now enter through forms with required fields. Automations route tasks to the right roles and teams. Recurring work uses pre-built templates. Even saving 10-15 minutes per person per day adds up to 50-75 hours per month for a team of this size.
Time tracking:
We rebuilt the time tracking process with four components: daily time logging, weekly timesheet submission, team lead approval (or return for corrections), and dashboards built exclusively on approved time entries.
After these changes, the leadership team gained three reliable data views: planned hours versus actual hours, the share of billable versus non-billable time, and where over-servicing was happening across clients.
Capacity planning starts not when people log time, but when work enters the system with an owner, estimate, and date.
— Oleksandr Vivchar, Operational Manager in Byte&Kite
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RESULTS
Better delivery structure led to nearly 2x billable output
By the end of the rollout, the agency had moved from loosely managed delivery to a system where work is visible before it becomes a problem.
Managers can now see real workload before assigning new tasks. Overload and idle capacity show up early, not after a missed deadline. Delivery planning became much more grounded because the data behind it stopped shifting every week.
Business level
After the rollout, the agency increased billable utilisation from 23% to 44.5%. That translated into 963 additional billable hours per month. Using a model rate of €60 per billable hour, that equals around €57.8k in additional monthly delivery value.
The important part is how this growth happened: not by hiring more people, but by getting more usable output from the same team.
×1.93
Billable output
+963
Extra hrs/mo
+€57.8k/mo
Delivery value
A lot of our process used to depend on people holding everything together manually. Now it’s built into the system, and we have a much clearer view of delivery and billable time across the team.
Tomas Richter
Founder & CEO, Performance Marketing Agency
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CASE STUDIES
