Logiciel & CRM pour agence de communication

I Who is it for

A tool designed for communication agencies with 3–30 people, not for international networks or freelancers just starting out.

A communications agency’s tools fall into two disconnected worlds: creative (Adobe, Figma, Canva) on one side, and management (a spreadsheet for new business, a generic CRM that ignores campaigns, an accounting tool for invoicing) on the other. Orizen doesn’t replace your creative tools—it takes over everything that isn’t design: new business, campaign quotes, retainers, outsourced production, profitability. And if your agency also builds websites, Orizen has a dedicated page for web agencies to complement this one. Four profiles keep coming up.

Agency owner / partner, 3–30 people

You pitch, you produce, you invoice, and on Friday evening you manually recalculate where your budgets and retainers stand in a spreadsheet that barely keeps up.

All in Orizen: new business pipeline, campaign quotes, recurring retainers, profitability per budget. The agency dashboard updates itself.

Account director / project manager

You manage multiple budgets in parallel, each at a different stage (one in concept, another in production, a third in media buying), with freelancers, printers and advertisers to keep in the loop. Information gets scattered across emails and meetings.

One budget = its campaign milestones, subcontractors, quote items and progress. You can see where each campaign stands at a glance.

Assistant / agency management

You re-enter retainer invoices every month, manually back-bill media buying and production, hoping you don’t miss anything or misallocate costs.

Retainers are automatically billed as subscriptions, production and media costs are re-invoiced without re-entry. The Pennylane export is one click away.

Management — control & profitability

You know your revenue, but not your margin. A prestigious budget can be a point of pride and a money pit: no one truly compares the creative hours sold against the time actually spent.

Timesheet by client budget: margin = billed items − logged time − resold purchases. Finally see which budgets make or lose you money.

II Unified agency workflows

New business, campaign quotes, recurring retainers — all in one tool, seamlessly.

The visual breakdown below: the unique challenges faced by communications agencies (new business in spreadsheets, lengthy campaign quotes, manual retainer invoicing, forgotten media resale, invisible per-budget profitability), what Orizen does for each, a typical use case for a 3–30-person agency, and a day in the life of an equipped agency.

What you experience daily

The unique challenges of communications agencies

Win new business budgets, quote multi-item campaigns, invoice monthly retainers effortlessly, resell production and media buys without missing a thing, and know if each budget is truly profitable—it’s a management job in its own right, on top of the creative work.

New business tracked in a spreadsheet

Prospecting for new advertisers, pitches, consultations, prospect budgets: your commercial conquest is managed in a spreadsheet that doesn’t follow up with anyone and forgets pitch dates. New budgets are won through tracking, not luck.

Extended campaign quotes

A campaign quote combines concept-creation, print and digital production, media buy and management: multiple items that a simple quote can’t structure. The result? Makeshift estimates in spreadsheets, hard to compare from one campaign to the next.

Monthly retainers billed manually

Community management, PR, monthly retainer consulting: these recurring revenues should invoice themselves. Manually billed, they get delayed, forgotten, and weaken the agency’s only stable MRR.

Retro-billing for media & forgotten production

Designers, freelancers, photographers, printers, media buys: every campaign involves subcontractors to coordinate and then resell to the advertiser with a margin. Without a central hub, a resold item gets lost and eats into profitability.

Invisible profitability per budget

Your creative fees are often fixed, but the actual time spent isn’t. Without time tracking per budget, you don’t know which projects are profitable and which, underquoted, are costing you money.

Balancing creative and management

Your teams live in Adobe, Figma and Canva; your management lives in a spreadsheet and an inbox. Neither world talks to the business: new business, campaign quotes, recurring retainers and profitability remain out of sight.

Orizen for communication agencies

Everything you need, in a single tool

Each module is designed for the reality of communication, branding, PR, advertising and event agencies.

CRM for new business & pitches

Manage the acquisition of new advertisers: prospect budget pipeline, pitches and consultations with their submission dates and documents (brief, recommendation, estimate), shortlisted competitors. Alerts notify you before each pitch.

New business Pitches Follow-ups

Multi-item campaign quotes

Quote a campaign by item: design & creation, print and digital production, media buying, management and time. Each item retains its trace from quote to invoice, making campaigns finally comparable.

Creation Production Media buying

Automated recurring retainers

Turn your monthly packages (community management, PR, consulting) into subscriptions: invoices generate and send automatically on the right date, with payment reminders if needed. You secure the agency’s MRR and free up management time.

Subscriptions Agency MRR Auto-invoiced

Creative project management by milestones

Structure each campaign into milestones (brief → concept → production → delivery → review) with progress and validations. You always know which stage each budget is at, without needing a meeting to find out.

Brief → report Milestones Approvals

Subcontractors & media retro-billing

Coordinate designers, freelancers, photographers, printers and media purchases, then back-bill them to the advertiser with your margin—without missing anything at invoicing. Each external item retains its trace from quote to invoice.

Freelancers Resale invoicing Media margin

Real profitability per client budget

Each team member logs their time by budget and phase. Orizen compares sold creative hours against actual time spent and calculates margin (billed items − logged time − resold purchases), budget by budget. Framework contracts and client portals included.

Time per budget Actual margin Client portal

Typical use case

Profile: communication agency, 3–30 people

Communication agency

3 to 30 people Budgets €200k to €4M France

Before Orizen: 4 tools, no margin visibility

New business tracked in a spreadsheet, campaign quotes cobbled together item by item, monthly retainers billed manually, media and production purchases re-invoiced from memory. At the end of each month, management spent half a day reconstructing the status of each budget — never truly knowing which were profitable.

With Orizen: everything is centralised

New business pipeline and campaign quotes in the same tool Retainers automatically invoiced as recurring subscriptions Margin per budget visible: billed items − time spent − resold purchases Pennylane export for accountants with no re-entry

A typical day with Orizen

From new business pitch to campaign wrap-up, friction-free

Here’s how an account director organises her day with Orizen.

08:30 — Morning

New business and deadline review

In 5 minutes, she sees this week’s competitions to submit, prospects to follow up on budgets, and campaigns with a milestone due for invoicing. Orizen flags a pitch at D-3—just enough time to finalise the recommendation with the creative team.

10:00 — New budget

Campaign quote accepted & framework contract signed

An advertiser approves the campaign. She creates the budget with its items (creative, production, media buy, management) and sets up a monthly community management retainer. The framework contract goes out for e-signature, and the advertiser signs right away.

14:00 — Production

Subcontractor coordination & back-billing

On a campaign in production, she assigns a photographer and a printer, approves a media buy, then updates the milestone progress. Orizen links each external cost to the budget: retro-billing to the advertiser, with margin, prepares itself for the next invoice.

17:30 — End of day

Up-to-date profitability dashboard

Without lifting a finger, the dashboard reflects the real-time situation: active budgets, new business in the pipeline, recurring retainers collected, time spent per budget, margin per campaign. Before the agency meeting, management can see at a glance which budgets are on track and which are overrunning.

III How it works

An agency equipped in a day, not in six months.

Three clear milestones: new business foundation + milestone-based budgets on Day 1, first automated recurring retainer in Week 1, and budget profitability tracking in Month 1.

Day 1 — The foundation

Pipeline, budgets and milestones in place

Import new business pipeline and advertisers
Ongoing budgets created with their items and campaign milestones
First campaign quote issued and framework contract signed online

Week 1 — The recurring cycle

First retainer billed automatically

Time tracking by budget for the team
First monthly retainer converted to auto-billed subscription
Pennylane connector configured, Orizen onboarding call

Month 1 — Management

Management and partners monitor margins.

Real-time agency dashboard (budgets, retainers, time spent, margin)
Deadline alerts for new business pitches and billable milestones
Profitability analysis by client budget and campaign stage

IV Frequently asked questions

Answers to the questions we’re asked most often.

What are the specific management needs of a communication agency?

A communication agency (branding, PR, advertising, events, marketing) combines workflows that creative tools (Adobe, Figma, Canva) and generic CRMs overlook: a long-cycle new business process involving prospecting for new advertisers, pitches and tenders; multi-line campaign quotes mixing design-creation, print and digital production, media buying and agency fees; recurring monthly retainers (community management, PR, consulting) that need invoicing without manual intervention; subcontractor coordination (designers, freelancers, photographers, printers) to be back-billed with a margin; and profitability that depends on the gap between sold creative hours and actual time spent. Orizen is designed for all these workflows together.

How does Orizen handle new business and CRM for a communication agency?

Orizen’s CRM is built for winning new budgets: a pipeline of new advertisers, pitches and tenders with their submission deadlines and documents (brief, recommendation, quote), prospect budgets to track and follow-ups you’ll never miss. Each opportunity includes the advertiser, decision-maker contact, suspected competitors and pitch deadline. Alerts notify you before every submission, so you can stop managing new business in a spreadsheet that barely keeps up.

Can you create multi-line campaign quotes and back-bill media buying?

Yes. A campaign quote is built with multiple lines: design and creation, print and digital production, media buying, agency fees and time. You coordinate subcontractors (designers, freelancers, photographers, printers) and media purchases, then Orizen back-bills them to the advertiser with your margin—without missing anything at invoicing. Each line retains its trace from quote to invoice, ensuring external purchases never accidentally reduce your profitability.

How can you automate invoicing for recurring monthly retainers?

Many agencies work on a monthly flat fee (community management, PR, consulting, monitoring): these are recurring revenues that shouldn’t require manual invoicing. In Orizen, a retainer becomes a subscription: the monthly invoice is generated and sent automatically on the due date, with payment reminders if needed. You secure your agency’s MRR and free up the person handling repetitive recurring invoices.

How does Orizen reveal the real profitability per client budget?

Each team member logs their time per client budget and campaign stage. Orizen compares the actual creative hours spent against sold hours and calculates the real margin (fees and billed items − charged time − back-billed purchases). You finally see which budgets are profitable and which, if underestimated, are losing money—so you can adjust your flat fees and retainers for future campaigns.

How much does Orizen cost for a communication agency?

Orizen is billed per active user (account managers, copywriters, art directors, project managers, community managers, management). The pricing remains within the range of industry-specific software on the market, but natively includes new business CRM, campaign quotes, recurring retainers, creative project management, timesheets, e-signature and the client portal—without needing to stack additional modules. For an agency of 3 to 30 people, it’s a single, clear subscription rather than four separate tools combined.

V Our conviction

A communication agency isn’t managed like an industrial SME.

A communication agency involves multiple interdependent workflows: new business for winning advertisers, multi-item campaign quotes, recurring monthly retainers, and retro-billing for subcontractors and media buys. For years, these had to be managed in separate systems — with hours of re-entry for every invoice.

Creative tools (Adobe, Figma, Canva) are irreplaceable for design but don’t handle new business or retainers. Generic CRMs and industrial ERPs, on the other hand, know nothing about campaign quotes, media resale, or per-budget profitability. For a 3–30-person agency, none truly fit.

We’ve seen too many agencies discover that a prestigious budget was a money pit because no one compared the sold creative hours to the actual time spent, forget to re-invoice a media purchase, bill a retainer a month late, or miss a pitch because the deadline was buried in an email.

So we built Orizen for communication agencies with 3–30 people. Agency-specific workflows in one tool, up and running in a day, hosted in France. Because an agency that wants to create with peace of mind doesn’t have time for an IT project, but can no longer settle for a spreadsheet that hides its margin.