→ Tactical Delivery Habits → Productisation
Productisation for agencies (or Productization for some) is often misunderstood. It is not about forcing clients into rigid boxes or turning your services into off the shelf products. It is about creating clarity, repeatability and value while still supporting fully bespoke client work.
Tactical Delivery Habits takes a practical view of this. It blends personalised delivery with reusable components and approaches that grow in value over time. This helps agencies deliver more consistently, more creatively and with less risk.
This shift improves delivery and strengthens your commercial position in competitive pitches. It does not limit creative thinking. Instead, it frees teams to focus their creativity where it makes the biggest difference by removing the need to rebuild the basics each time.
Quality control also improves because the work is built on approaches and components that have already been tested across real projects. The method works for agencies of any size. It scales naturally because it is built around simple habits rather than heavy frameworks.
Productisation supports bespoke personalised project briefs while giving clients a clear offer and giving your team the confidence to deliver at pace. It is also something that can be introduced gradually. Most agencies build capability step by step as they learn what works best for them.
1. A bespoke, value focused customer offer
Every client still receives a tailored experience. Agency productisation does not change that. What it does is provide a clearer value path that helps teams shape solutions around what matters most to the client. Instead of reinventing delivery each time, the team works from a strong foundation and invests more creative and strategic effort in the parts of the project that truly need bespoke thinking. This applies to design too. Reusable elements support the work behind the scenes, but the final creative expression is always shaped around the client’s goals and taste.
2. Reusable approaches and processes
Agencies repeat a huge amount of work across projects. Productisation helps turn this into an advantage by creating reusable approaches that support scalable agency delivery. These approaches remain adaptable, creative and shaped by real project experience. They improve over time as strategists, designers, developers and project managers add what they have learned.
Shared approaches also strengthen collaboration because everyone understands how the work moves from one stage to the next. They lower decision fatigue by reducing the number of micro decisions teams face each day. When workloads peak or timelines tighten, these dependable ways of working help maintain quality and lower delivery risk. Retrospectives become more meaningful too, because clearer patterns make it easier to see what worked and what needs improvement.
From the client viewpoint, the experience still feels flexible and responsive. The structure supports the team, while clients enjoy a smooth, tailored process.
3. Resellable products, components, abilities and tools
Over time, repeated patterns and useful assets can evolve into resellable products, components and tools that strengthen agency productisation. These assets help teams deliver work more smoothly because they are built from real project experience and refined through ongoing use. They support consistency and quality without making outputs look or feel the same. Each project still results in a bespoke outcome shaped around the client’s needs.
These assets are not static. They grow with every project as new ideas, feedback and creative challenges shape their evolution. They also reduce single points of failure because knowledge is shared across the team instead of sitting with individuals. This makes delivery more resilient and lowers operational risk.
Importantly, these internal products do not require a separate product team or heavy investment. They emerge naturally from everyday agency work and stay completely invisible to clients, who continue to receive personalised solutions.
How bespoke offers and resellable products work in practice
Here is a simple view of how agency productisation works in practice when shaping a new client proposal.
A client shares a brief. The agency reviews it to confirm it aligns with their abilities, capacity and strategy. If it is work they want to win and can deliver, the team then considers how to meet the brief using their existing offerings and what, if anything, would need to be created for this specific project. They look at where they have delivered similar outcomes before and where new components or extra effort might be required.
The aim is to build the right solution from as many proven elements as possible. This avoids recreating everything from scratch and limits how many new components the project needs. It also reduces delivery risk, because more of the solution is based on approaches and components already tested across real projects.
Any improvement made to a product or tool benefits every future project that uses it. This means quality rises over time while delivery becomes more efficient. Estimating also becomes more accurate because the team has a clearer understanding of the effort required. This helps protect profit margins and reduces unexpected costs.
Teams align faster because familiar components reduce ambiguity. Momentum stays high and internal friction is reduced. This approach still allows full flexibility. As the brief evolves, the team adapts the solution without being constrained by the components used to build the early outline.
The agency then documents the solution in clear client focused language. The proposal remains entirely bespoke, centred on the client’s goals and outcomes. Nothing feels generic or reused. This also makes onboarding smoother, because the agency has a reliable internal structure for shaping and explaining the work.
How reusable approaches support scalable agency delivery
During the align, define and deliver stages, agencies rely on many different activities, from workshops and documentation to testing, deployment and approval cycles. Without shared approaches, these can vary widely between individuals or teams. Productisation helps create reusable approaches that support scalable agency delivery while still leaving room for professional judgement.
These approaches are shaped by real project experience and improve over time. As strategists, designers, developers and project managers contribute what they have learned, the approaches become more practical, relevant and efficient. They also make collaboration easier because everyone understands how the work flows from one stage to the next.
Working from familiar approaches reduces planning time and lowers cognitive load by removing the need to constantly make micro decisions. When workloads peak or timelines narrow, these dependable ways of working help teams maintain quality without adding risk. They also make delivery more predictable, which means issues can be spotted earlier and adjustments made before they escalate.
Retrospectives become more valuable as well, because the team can compare like for like. It becomes easier to see what worked, what did not and where improvements will have the greatest impact. The approaches guide the work, but they never override professional judgement. Teams can adapt them when a situation requires something different.
From the client perspective, this still feels flexible and tailored. The structure operates behind the scenes to support delivery, while clients enjoy a smooth and responsive process.
The benefits of productisation for agencies
Productisation for agencies creates a clearer and more scalable way to deliver bespoke work. It helps teams respond faster, shape proposals with confidence and protect profit margins by building on proven components and approaches. It reduces delivery risk because familiar patterns make the work more predictable and issues easier to spot early.
Clients still receive tailored solutions shaped around their goals, while the agency benefits from reusable approaches, resellable components and opportunities to create long term commercial value. Over time this reduces friction, improves consistency and turns everyday project work into reusable assets the whole team can benefit from.
Productisation also helps agencies learn from their best work. When great ideas or effective approaches are captured and reused, the overall quality of future projects steadily increases. These gains continue to grow when combined with the wider Tactical Delivery Habits framework, which brings clarity and momentum to every stage of delivery.
This makes productisation for agencies a powerful way to improve delivery while keeping every project bespoke.
If you would like to see how productisation fits alongside the rest of Tactical Delivery Habits, explore the full framework next. If you would prefer a conversation about how this could work in your agency, feel free to get in touch.