Why Creative and PR Agencies Need Managed IT

About Georg Dauterman:
Georg believes in the fusion of technology and creativity. With a background in both fields, he started his career in IT departments of publishing and advertising agencies, realizing the critical need for tech aligned with business goals. Joining Valiant in 2004, Georg’s expertise and passion for efficiency brought industry recognition. He holds a history degree from Queens College and serves on Datto’s Global Partner Advisory Board. Beyond his leadership role, Georg enjoys exploring culinary skills, fitness, and outdoor adventures with his family.

About Megan Quick:
Megan is a member of the Valiant Marketing & Sales team, assisting in demonstrating the value of our services and ensuring positive experiences for prospective clients. When not working with technology, she is a theater production manager and performer, producing her own comedy shows, and is an avid writer. Megan has a B.A. in Theater from Sewanee: The University of The South.

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

• Why managed IT is important for creative and PR agencies, and how secure IT infrastructure protects client data and supports creative work.
• The biggest challenges agencies currently face, including compliance risk, cybersecurity gaps, and inefficient systems.
• How master service agreements can expose agencies to hidden legal and data security risks.
• Why agencies undervalue data from client information to employee and financial records, and how you can protect it.
• How poor IT processes create friction in onboarding, offboarding, and day to day operations.
• Common mistakes growing agencies make, including using high-level executives for basic IT tasks.
• When to hire a managed service provider and the signs you’ve outgrown DIY IT.
• Three steps to take to strengthen your agency’s IT foundation, including system audits, cloud security reviews, and documented onboarding processes.

Transcript:

Megan Quick:
Hello and welcome to The Creative Stack, a show about the intersection of creativity and information technology. I'm your host, Megan Quick, and this week's topic, we're talking about why creative and PR agencies need managed IT. I'm here today with my co-host and president of Valiant Technology, Georg Dauterman. Hi, Georg. How are you today?
Georg Dauterman:
I'm doing great, Megan. Thanks. Very happy to be here to record our first podcast episode. It's pretty exciting.

Megan Quick:
This is so exciting. This feels like a moment to step back and just say, "Wow, we did it. We're here. We're sitting here after a lot of goals to be here." I'm really excited to start.

Georg Dauterman:
Me too. Me too.

Megan Quick:
Yeah. So, Georg, we discussed possible topics. We have, obviously, a long list of things to talk about when it comes to information technology. But we both agreed it would be good to start with why Valiant has chosen to focus on creative agencies and PR agencies. And on that note, the question for this episode is, why do creative and PR agencies need managed IT?

Georg Dauterman:
Sure.

Megan Quick:
And I know you've thought a lot about this topic, Georg, so-

Georg Dauterman:
Yeah. Probably more than I want to admit.

Megan Quick:
We chatted about this in my interview.

Georg Dauterman:
That's right. That's right. We did, many years ago when you first started working with us. Well, what we found over the... Why creative PR agencies need managed IT is much like any other business; IT is the fundamental underpinning sort of tool that almost every employee or person in a company uses, particularly when you are creating things. IT technology is a means to express your thoughts, to communicate with others, and IT, our job is to facilitate that, build the infrastructure, keep it safe, and help particularly small businesses, small agencies, independents, operate their business in a way that keeps them focused on their mission and their work, as well as keep them safe. One of the things that our job fundamentally is is to keep people safe without having to be super worried. They should worry a little bit.

Megan Quick:
Yeah. It's healthy to worry a little. Yeah.

Georg Dauterman:
Yeah. Paranoia is not a horrible thing, but you don't want it to be crippling, or you don't want the opposite, which is the ignorance of it is the attackers and bad guys are not ignorant of you.

Megan Quick:
Exactly, and they're always thinking about... Again, not to talk about the fear-based stuff, but they are always thinking about new ways to get your info, so it's good to partner with someone like Valiant to actually strategize around that and be more secure.

Now, Georg, and that's why Valiant focuses on it, which is great, but I know you have a personal history with PR agencies and advertising, which kind of led you to this point with your own company. Could you tell us a little bit about your personal history?

Georg Dauterman:
Sure. I was a really lucky person. Sometimes you get things in life, opportunities that sort of come your way, regardless of what you did or didn't do. And when I first started working on IT, I worked in a small, at the time, fairly small Mac VAR, or value-added reseller. And many of our clients were ad agencies, so working on Macs, doing all sorts of very desktop, Mac-focused work. I got an opportunity to work for a pretty large advertising agency here in New York that was part of a large holding company, so I got some really great people who showed a lot of interest in me and allowed me to start fixing desktops and doing warranty repair on Macs, all the way to running a network and learning all the many facets of the IT operation.

So having worked with the creatives and what they used to call digital back in the day, people developing websites and Web 1.0 strategy, I really loved working with those people and really what they bring to the table and the job they do, which is something that most people don't really understand or see, even though you see their work every day all the time, advertising and public relations and all that sort of marketing communications are everywhere. But the process of making it is actually really fascinating, especially the really heavy-duty creative strategy stuff, and I just really liked the environment.

And I always loved working on Macs, even though I've worked on a lot of other stuff over the years, and just like helping those folks out because I feel like they're not as well-addressed as other segments of the business market. You could probably swing a bat and hit a bunch of folks who are IT services firms for financial services companies here in New York or CPA firms, but if you ask someone if they focus on working with PR marketing agencies, they look at you a little skewed, like, "Oh, I don't know what that means. What do you guys even do for them?" So it's kind of like that. And I think they need and deserve the same level of support, if not better, because they may not think that way day in, day out as creatives.

Megan Quick:
No, I think we've encountered the creative who they are brilliant at what they're brilliant at, and then when it comes to IT, they're like, "I just want someone to make sure my computer's up and running and that it can get the job done." And, Georg, I know I've seen the relief enter our clients' eyes when you really understand the day they have to pitch, the day they have to make sure everything goes smoothly because they've got a client coming in, and you take that urgency very seriously when they present you with it. I mean, I think you're the antithesis of the stereotype of the IT guy when it comes to understanding people.

Georg Dauterman:
I think Valiant as a whole, as a company, we've done a good job of that. It's sort of baked into our mindset. But I think a lot of it is that we sort of always understood that the folks that do that kind of work, they just don't see the world that way, and I think it's our job to help them understand it and to get them... And again, sort of our manifest job is to keep them from harm. It's sort of corny on one level, but another level, it's kind of the mission.

Megan Quick:
No, keep them afloat. Their IT can be working for them, not against them, and I think people often feel the opposite. So in your, I won't say how many years of experience, but in your-

Georg Dauterman:
Many years.

Megan Quick:
In your many years of experience, what has been the most exciting thing about working with these companies for you, maybe even more broadly for our team at Valiant?

Georg Dauterman:
Well, first off, they're usually very interesting folks. They're smart. They're very dynamic and creative. They say crazy stuff, which is kind of fun. Kind of enjoy that part of it. And they're never static. So they can be very challenging in that... One of the factors we see is that we support a lot of agencies that have a boatload of contract workers or freelancers where they'll win a pitch, they'll do a project or they're pitching something specific, and we want to make sure that those folks are safe, secure, working. It's a really big part of their job. We have a whole segment, another episode we're going to talk about this because it's such a big challenge, it's a big part of it, but that dynamic aspect of it. And also, I just think that it's a place where we can do the most impactful support for folks because I don't think that people are addressing their specific needs day in, day out, and so we really want to hear that.

So it's exciting to have an impact. If I had to say what makes it exciting is we can really help folks achieve their goal and mission in a way that is rewarding and you get the sense of accomplishment from it. 

Megan Quick:
Yeah. Absolutely. Again, I joined the Valiant team six years ago, but I agree, the wide range of personalities we meet, the creativity that we encounter with these folks, and then, yeah, just knowing that we can give them the solutions to these problems so that they can actually go on and do the work that often they're passionate about. You don't end up in a creative career unless you're passionate, and it's great to work with folks like that. So in your opinion, Georg, what is the biggest IT challenge facing PR and marketing agencies?

Georg Dauterman:
I always get nervous giving you one thing, but I'll give you a couple of things that I think are important. I think that they tend to underplay the risk that they take day in, day out as a firm. I work with a lot of agencies and I look at a lot of master service agreements. I'm not a lawyer, don't play one on TV, but I try to help people and guide them as part of my role with customers. And they're agreeing to a lot of rules and regulations and compliance that I don't necessarily think they understand. I think that's a big risk they take, especially when they're entering agreements with really large corporations that have a lot of, say, legal firepower. I think that's one thing that's really... They take a lot of risk with that.

Another thing I think is that they underplay that they don't have anything of value as a company. They have a lot of valuable things. I mean, they have client data, they have personal employee data, financials. They have a lot of things that do have value. And I think that they underestimate the friction that poor IT leads to. I mean, Megan, you and I worked in sales together for many years, and the thing that we hear time and again is the poor onboarding and offboarding experience people have. There's no policies or procedures. It's sort of always like a guesswork. And I think that the time people spend doing that, if they actually objectively looked at it, would see how negative it would be impactful on their company and on their team's creativity and on their team's ability to do their job.

Once again, we always had to go back to why we're doing all this. IT for IT's sake is this goofy... It doesn't make sense. It's a waste of time and resources. But it should really be about them having a better operation that gives them a sense of security and confidence and getting out the door. So it's really important.

Megan Quick:
Yeah, I agree, and I think you were talking about... Just to go back to when you talked about they undervalue the PII they have, personal information, and I love our team member, Justin Penchina, he always uses the metaphor because it's like people think that it's like planning a heist, like they're going to target one big guy. And it's like it's a parking lot, and they're checking all of the doors, and if there's a door unlocked, they're walking in. Your business is the car. You have to make sure it's locked. Yeah.

Georg Dauterman:
They're popping open a door and looking around for change.

Megan Quick:
"Oh, look, there are iPhones in there." Yeah, yeah.

Georg Dauterman:
But then there's some days it's like, "Oh, someone left a laptop in here," and there's something very valuable.

Megan Quick:
Which is also a real thing that, leaving the metaphor world behind, that is something we can also help with as or-

Georg Dauterman:
Yes. That's one of the ones unfortunately.

Megan Quick:
Happens quite a lot.

Georg Dauterman:
... happens more often than you think. Particularly here in New York, people tend to leave them in cabs. This time of year particularly at the holiday party, the bag gets left behind-

Megan Quick:

Two glasses of white wine, suddenly your hands are just not remembering what you came into the car with.

Georg Dauterman:
100%. 100%.

Megan Quick:
I totally get it. No, that's true. And also just usually folks in these creative agencies, they are going to clients, they are presenting, you're moving a lot, so you have to make sure the equipment you have is secure when you do.

Georg Dauterman:
Correct.

Megan Quick:
Kind of going off of this, Georg, with what the biggest challenges are, and I think you kind of spoke to it, the devaluing of the information they have and understanding how much IT really affects them, do you see any very specific mistakes across the board these companies making?

Georg Dauterman:
Yeah, for sure. For sure. I mean, the most common being that they tend to let the... They have really expensive resources doing really low-value or common work. Plus, when you're paying someone a high-six-figure, multi-six-figure salary, and they're setting up, they're going to the Apple Store, that's a giant mistake. Or a CEO's doing it themselves-

Megan Quick:
They're putting all the applications on the computer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've seen that quite a lot.

Georg Dauterman:
I've seen that all time. And I think what happens is they don't understand the time or opportunity costs they're spending. And also, as someone who's done a lot of DIY projects in my life, be it fixing cars or houses or whatever, there is an expertise that can make things better, faster, and more efficient and you have to kind of know when that time is. And it's a hard decision. I always think IT falls into one of the weirdest categories, and you have to find someone you like to work with because we have a lot of interaction with people; we really do get very deeply involved in the company's operations.

Megan Quick:
I always say, for lack of a better word, we're a very intimate vendor and partner.

Georg Dauterman:
Yeah. That's a great way to put it. I mean, of all the partners or vendors you work with, we're probably the one your team will talk to the most. And that's not just IT, but IT in general.

But I think that, let's go back to the common mistakes, is that people undervalue, A, what they have, and B, how inefficient they are, but they also really don't... They don't have anyone giving them any kind of big picture. And what happens is they tend to get bogged down in less important pieces of the business, or they don't focus on really growth or innovation in their business so that they can... Our whole goal is to take away a lot of the day-to-day, sort of, let's say, routine tasks and functions, but in general, most agencies tend to have one beleaguered person doing that, so we want-

Megan Quick:
I have to say, the stressed-out office manager, the stressed COO...

Georg Dauterman:

100%. They are dealing with this, especially if they're in a high-growth agency or they're in this space where they're onboarding a lot of contract workers. That's a very stressful time.

Megan Quick:
Yeah, and they're just like... It's their whole day. Often, and again, you and I working together, we often get a call where they're just like, "I am not doing my job right now. I'm doing another job," and we say, "Well, yeah, because what you're doing, IT, is its own full-time job," and the right partner is really important.

Well, on that note, and I think you and I have kind of touched on it, but how can they avoid these mistakes? How can they take steps towards solutions?

Georg Dauterman:
Yeah. No, it's good. I think a lot of it comes down to is knowing what you want to get out of the technology beyond just sending emails and using Adobe. There's a lot more to that. I think understanding integrations, understanding what things are missing, and I think a lot of it is either having a great partner or working with someone inside your team. Our best engagements are the ones we see... There's usually a fairly high level either principal or management team member who's really focused on making this happen for their company. And then it's championed and they understand it and they're open to learn about it. Once again, learning about it doesn't ever make you an expert in it, but I think it's an important way of understanding what's out in the world, some of the challenges.

And I think I'd be remiss if I didn't mention some of the AI challenges that are coming down the pike where these different vendors, different applications, and securing them all and understanding who's behind them, if that makes sense, and who's operating them. So there's a lot to it, and I think it's a lot for any one small or medium business, I mean, even large businesses, to handle without some outside guidance or without some dedicated resource to really own it.

Megan Quick:
No, and I remember, I mean, this was a little before my time, but I remember you guys... Because Valiant has been around now for about 20 years, maybe a little more, and you guys talk about these big shifts in... And sorry, it's a little inspired by what you were saying. But with AI, you talk about these big shifts in the past, you've talked about when everyone went to cloud, how you helped that, how you as a company had to be the one educating your clients on it. And when they're ready, they're ready. And then the-

Georg Dauterman:
Yeah, it's actually interesting. The parallels are really stunning to me in that 10 years ago, or maybe a little longer now, everything was this big move to cloud, it was going to be very self-service, and all we did was just made it more complicated. It shifted, right? We used to run a lot of things on premise, building out server rooms and small data centers in an office or having a back hall to a data center. It's totally different creature. And now, especially for small/medium businesses, they're running a lot of their workloads in the cloud, and it just requires... It's not any more or less work, it's just different work. I think that's what we're seeing a lot as well, especially with the AI evolution now. We're in year three roughly, and now we're starting to see some practical applications of it, particularly in day-to-day applications.

That being said, cloud took almost 10 years to finish, be fully integrated, but interestingly enough, now there's this talk of shifting the workloads back to local resources because it's lower-cost. So it's very cyclical, like anything else, and it's evolutionary. And AI is a revolutionary technology, but it evolves as you're still working with people.

Megan Quick:
Yeah. No, and I think, again, one thing I learned... Because I remember joining this team and I was like, "Oh, gosh, what do I know about IT," but I remember you really stressing we serve people who use technology.

Georg Dauterman:
Correct.

Megan Quick:
And I think, like you said, AI, all this stuff, we need to make adjustments, we need to learn, we need to understand how to use it, but also at the end of the day, it's got to work for our clients.

Georg Dauterman:
Right. It has to make sense, either make the work product better or find efficiencies. There's a lot to it, and I think that everyone's still trying to figure it out. And I don't think it's set in stone yet.

Megan Quick:
Interesting. Interesting moment. So, Georg, going back a little bit to our core topic today, and you've kind of touched on this as well, and this is always kind of the million-dollar question, especially working in sales... And when I pick up the phone and someone's looking for support, often they've reached a certain amount of people, they can't handle the onboardings, they can't handle the management. What point in your experience does it make sense for a small creative or PR agency to partner with someone like a managed service provider? When should they take that step?

Georg Dauterman:
It's a great question. I'd say that at any point, they should have at least someone helping them support some of their core setup, at least in the initial phases of it. Some of the biggest mistakes we see, or honestly, mistakes is a strong word, but challenging situations, is when people set things up themselves and kind of leave the defaults in place. Microsoft and Google make it really easy to set up a workspace or Microsoft 365 environment, but there's hundreds of settings, and unless you kind of know what they all do, it might make sense to start with someone to help you get set up, at least initially.

And I think that when you start getting to the point that you're spending more time on this, then you're saving money. And that's a very subjective question that you have to ask yourself was... We support agencies as small as five people because their leadership was like, "We want to de-risk our environment. We want to build a program that we think was going to scale and be scalable." Other places, they might wait till 30 or 40 folks are working there and they've outstretched the resources and they're looking for a full solution. So it's very subjective.

But I think what it comes down to is if you're growing really fast, if you're finding yourself doing more of this work than you think is reasonable, you really do need to find a good partner to help you with this, or hire someone internally. But generally speaking, I would probably say hiring might be a challenge in that if you're sub-100 people, you might not keep that person very busy. So really it's looking for someone that, I always say, someone that gets you and understands where you want to go and can work with you on that and handle it for you. But I mean, most importantly, it's that the value of time and de-risking is there so that you can go back to your core strategic role and mission. That's really what it comes down to.

Megan Quick:
Absolutely. Sorry, and I got really excited when you said when you're spending more time than you think you should. I feel like you're right, it's a subjective question, it's personal, but also you know when you've hit it and you know when it's taking away from what drives you to get up every day and do your work. And these small creative agencies, we're often working with a person who founded it. It's their baby. They need it to work. And I think that's such a great note on that. Yeah.

Georg Dauterman:
It's interesting, the person who is our best client is usually the COO who's brought in to manage this whole environment after the CEO, who's usually a creative, doesn't want this to be their job anymore. And we found that sort of the ops or integrator is a great person to work with because we can just get, not just Valiant, but in general... Because the CEO can be a challenging person to work with because they have conflicting priorities, so it gets challenging for them. So we really want that sort of, either a CEO who wants to fully vest themselves and have someone they can trust to do it and hold them accountable for it, or if someone's brought in to do that role of ownership of it and then them working with a... Like Valiant, there's a lot of great providers out there... Maybe not for PR firms, there's not a ton of people focusing on them, but who understand their unique needs, and it really helps them get along.

Megan Quick:
Yeah, absolutely. And also, this is my own observation, and I know we'll probably do a whole episode about this, but I want to note that finding MSPs that do Macs and Windows machines is actually very difficult, which I didn't know until I joined the industry, and I know that's a big thing that PR agencies and advertising agencies come across too. They're like, "Oh."

Georg Dauterman:
Yeah, it depends on a lot of the Macs or... And it's not just sort of semi, but it's truly managing them at a very high level and deploying them efficiently and getting them back efficiently if someone leaves the firm. That's other piece of it that gets tricky and people don't realize. It's a fairly high-turnover industry, creatives and market communication, and you want to be able to grab something, repurpose it, and get it back in production for you.

Megan Quick:
Oh, the offboarding. The offboarding and onboarding. It's so funny. Before I, again, joined this team, now I'm like, I preach the gospel off onboardings and offboardings needing to be dialed in.

Georg Dauterman:
Correct.

Megan Quick:
All right, Georg, I have a fun, for our last question, a fun hypothetical for you. Say you get a call today from a PR company and they're growing really fast. The CEO is the one setting up the computers, going to the Apple Store, everything we've kind of said, handling payroll. But they are growing fast enough that they do need a stronger foundation. And bar calling us or another agency like us, what are... Because this stuff can be so daunting to even look at to start, what are the first three things you would suggest that person do just to truly take an effective step in the right direction?

Georg Dauterman:
That's a great question. So the first thing I would do is I would stop and try to take stock of what tools and systems I have. One of the things we find is that there's this idea of a technical sprawl, they just don't know what they have. So I would sort of pause and try to understand what systems are in place, who has what, and if they're using it.

The second thing I would do is I would recommend that they have someone do an audit, particularly of their cloud environment, just because that's probably where they're storing most of their data, and you really want to understand what's going on in there so that they can have a sense of, is there something not securely configured, does it need something, just so they have a baseline that they can work off. It's sort of like getting that x-ray or that test when you're healthy, when you don't need it.

Megan Quick:
Before the pain comes. Yeah.

Georg Dauterman:
Before the pain comes, right. And the last thing I would really look at is, and this is where I think most folks really struggle, I would just walk through their process for onboarding/offboarding staff. I think that's one of the most challenging and underrated/undervalued components of the work, especially for fast-growing agencies. Just walk me through how you do it. I'm actually working on another agency now, trying to help them streamline it because they have a very high contractor utilization, and just trying to get them to get the documentation correctly and make it repeatable.

So those are the three places. Once again, there's really simple stuff, like inventory, understand what you got, it's a little bit of security reviewing, and then this really fundamental onboarding/offboarding, which can be sort of complicated because you may not think about the complications because you never wrote it down.

Megan Quick:
Yeah. Challenge yourself to write it down. I always think about this process as you have to start looking under the bed, look in the closet, start organizing. It's always more daunting to avoid it than when you actually start doing the work.

Georg Dauterman:
Correct. Correct.

Megan Quick:
That's really great. And, Georg, I'll give you a softball because 'tis the season, and I don't know if we'll use this or not, but we were talking about favorite movies earlier for the holiday...

Georg Dauterman:
Oh, man. You're asking me to pick my children. It's like Sophie's Choice. But I'd say my two favorite holiday movies are Die Hard...

Megan Quick:
Cool.

Georg Dauterman:
... or Christmas Vacation.

Megan Quick:
All right. Those stress me out.

Georg Dauterman:
I know, stress you out. They're both stressful movies. I think Christmas Vacation in particular is like just... We watch it every year. It's always bonkers. You can't believe this movie was made. Third set of Griswold kids. It's amazing.

Megan Quick:
Everything goes wrong. I get so stressed. My favorite is It's a Wonderful Life, which we talked about, and then Elf because Christmas spirit needs to-

Georg Dauterman:
Elf's a great movie. I'd say Elf's third in there because... Particularly the homage to the Rankin/Bass movies from when I was a kid.

Megan Quick:
Yeah. That one really knocked it out of the park.

All right. Well, that was such a great conversation. Georg, thanks for chatting with me today. I feel great about this being our first episode. I hope y'all enjoyed it.

Thank you so much for listening to The Creative Stack. If you enjoyed the episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. The Creative Stack is created by Valiant Technology, a managed IT service provider based in New York that specializes in providing creative agencies and PR firms with the technology they need to achieve their goals. Please visit us at thevaliantway.com to learn more about our services. I'll see you next time.