Furious squad wants to save agencies time

Davy Tessier and Mickael Lellouche founded the communications agency Disko and ran it for 10 years. They now lead the startup Furious squad, which offers a comprehensive solution for agency management.

Interview.

In a nutshell, what is Furious?

Furious is an innovative, custom-built platform capable of managing all operations—including tracking time spent on projects (CRM and sales management, reporting, staffing, projects, expenses, outsourcing, etc.)—using artificial intelligence. Furious has already won over many leading and growing agencies.

Thanks to AI, Furious helps our clients anticipate and improve their operations (rather than just monitor them). And that changes everything (conversational interface, predictive alerts, HR management and forecasting, etc.).

By consolidating all their workflows in one place, Furious replaces an average of seven tools for our clients, saving them 30% of the time spent on back-office tasks and 20% of management time.

It is the most comprehensive management tool for service companies on the market.

Why did you create Furious?

Back when Disko was growing rapidly, we put the best tools on the market to the test, but we came to a simple conclusion: the more tools there are, the less visibility there is.

So we developed a method, then interfaces, then tools, then correlations, and finally APIs to best manage the agency’s growth and profitability.

But in an agency, it’s practically impossible to combine editorial work with client services. Whenever a talent was available, they were quickly snapped up to fill an urgent client need.

So it wasn’t until after I sold the company that a suggestion came up during coffee with a former colleague: “Now that we’re no longer competitors, would you like to help me restructure my internal systems?”

Furious was born…

How did you experience the lockdown?

Great! We have two locations, one in Paris and one in Montpellier.

We already have (thanks to Furious) a culture of remote work. For example, we have weekly work-from-home days for everyone. So we were used to hearing each other’s kids in the background during video calls! In short, from an internal perspective, not much has changed.

On the business side, however, we’ve had a heavy workload (and it shows no signs of letting up!).

In fact, many agencies were not prepared to manage operations remotely. As a result, some of them found themselves in the dark during this period (in terms of scheduling, KPIs, customer relationship management, knowledge management, HR, etc.).

So we’ve worked hard to help our new clients get through this period as smoothly as possible.

What’s new with you?

We’ve been fortunate enough to win over many agencies with a wide variety of profiles: advertising, digital, PR, development, and media agencies, among others. And we continue to invest in the product so that every type of agency, digital services firm, and startup can find a way to work with Furious that suits their needs.

We have released a version of Furious that allows us to deploy it within agencies that are part of large groups, such as at the advertiser’s office.

Why do you think you’re the best tool for agencies?

We already havethe most comprehensive functional coverage on the market.

This allows us to take advantage of a large amount of data and correlations.

Our goal is therefore clear: to save time for all departments within the agency and, above all, to be proactive.

And that is clearly our greatest strength! Rather than simply producing dashboards after the fact, Furious consistently provides projections that enable faster decision-making.

With Furious, it’s impossible to lose money without being warned beforehand!

What is your goal for the start of the school year?

We continue to invest “furiously” in the product.

This fall, we are adding numerous APIs and interoperability features to optimize integration with our customers’ environments as much as possible.

Because we invest heavily—and will continue to do so—inintegration, our tool’s deployment time is already among the shortest on the market ( about 3 weeks).

For us, this is the most important key to success. The faster the adoption rate, the lower the risk associated with changing internal tools and methods. A change in tools cannot happen without the teams’ buy-in.

We invest a great deal of effort in this area with our clients to ensure a smooth transition.

This interview was conducted by CB News on July 14, 2020.

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