Davy Tessier and Mickael Lellouche founded and ran the Disko communications agency for 10 years. Today, they head up the young start-up Furious Squad, which offers a complete solution for agency management.
Interview.
In a few words, what is Furious?
Furious is an innovative, tailor-made platform capable of managing all operations, including time spent per project (CRM and sales management, reporting, staffing, projects, expenses, subcontracting, etc.) via artificial intelligence. Furious has already won over a number of leading and growing agencies.
Thanks to AI, Furious makes it possible to anticipate and improve our customers’ operations (and not just follow them). And that changes everything (conversational interface, predictive alerting, HR management and prediction, etc.).
With all their workflows in one place, Furious replaces an average of 7 tools at our customers’ sites, saving 30% of time on back-office issues and 20% of management time.
It’s the most comprehensive management tool for service companies on the market.
Why did you create Furious?
At the time of Disko and our strong growth, we challenged the best tools on the market, but came to a simple conclusion: the more tools there are, the less visibility there is.
So we devised a method, then interfaces, then tools, then correlations and finally APIs to best manage the agency’s growth and profitability.
But in the agency world, it’s virtually impossible to combine publishing with services. Whenever talent became available, it was quickly snapped up to meet an urgent customer need.
So we had to wait until the company was sold and a suggestion made over coffee with a former colleague: “And now that we’re no longer competitors, why don’t you help me restructure my internal tools?”
Furious was born…
How did you cope with the confinement period?
Great! We have two locations, one in Paris and one in Montpellier.
We already have (thanks to Furious) a culture of dematerialization. For example, we set up weekly teleworking days for everyone. So we were used to hearing from each other’s children behind the visios! In short, not much has changed internally.
On the other hand, we’ve had a heavy workload (and it’s not letting up!).
Indeed, many branches were not prepared to manage remote operations. As a result, some of them found themselves blind during this period (planning, kpis, customer relationship management, capitalization, HR, etc.).
So we’ve been working hard to help our new customers get through this period as smoothly as possible.
What’s your latest news?
We’ve been lucky enough to be able to convince many agencies with very different profiles: advertising agencies, digital agencies, PR agencies, development agencies, media agencies… And we’re continuing to invest in the product so that every type of agency, ESN or start-up can find its own way of working in Furious.
We’ve released a variant of Furious that allows us to deploy within integrated agencies in large groups, for example at the advertiser’s site.
Why do you think you’re the best tool for agencies?
We already havethe most extensive functional coverage on the market.
This allows us to take advantage of a lot of data and correlations.
Our aim is clear: to save time for all the agency’s professions, and above all to be predictive.
And that’s clearly our great strength! Rather than simply producing dashboards after the battle, Furious systematically provides projections that enable you to make decisions more quickly.
With Furious, it’s impossible to lose money without being warned!
What’s your goal for the new season?
We continue to invest in the product “fiercely”.
Because we invest heavily – and will continue to do so – inintegration, our tool deployment time is already among the shortest on the market (around 3 weeks).
For us, this is the most important key success factor. The higher the speed of adoption, the lower the risk of changing tools and internal methods. A change of tool cannot be made without the support of the teams.
We invest a lot in this area with our customers, to make the changeover as secure as possible.
This interview was conducted by CB News on July 14, 2020.
