Traffic Assistant - Penquin

The traffic assistant is responsible for assisting with assessing traffic needs within the organisation to properly delegate projects to service team members based on current workload, to ensure that the companies processes, and procedures are adhered to by all teams whilst ensuring effective work practices in the delivery of excellent work on time and on budget to the internal clients and stakeholders.

The Traffic Assistant must assist in ensuring that all creative requirements are met within the organisation from brain storming to resource allocation per project.

This involves creating and maintaining up to date skills development plans which will ensure that the agency always has the correct members of staff with the required skills to deliver on projects sold by the agency.
The traffic assistant further needs to assist the traffic manager to ensure that all information provided by the client, is provided before the job gets allocated, to avoid time wastage on projects.

All projects need to manage and run to predefined budgets and need to ensure ROI for the agency and the department. The internal collaborators are the ECD and creative team, digital and social media team, strategy team, media department, and the client service teams. It is the traffic manager's responsibility to ensure that deliverables are designed and delivered in accordance with the client’s objectives within prescribed timelines

Time management is of paramount importance in this role, in that all staff performing a deliverable, need to be held accountable for their outputs and these need to maintain in Workbook.
The traffic assistant is responsible in helping the Traffic Manager for all time allocations for the team, as well as ensuring that all work briefed into the studio, has an approved CE, and charged correctly.

Key performance areas

Strategic planning and alignment

• Formulate and develop processes and procedures for the traffic department in conjunction with the finance and operations manager these are to be printed and documented to ensure consistency in the department. Ensure that any updates and changes are updated to the documents.
• Ensure that project plans are prepared for every activity undertaken by the team, including status documents on all activities delivered in within the teams. These reports are to be delivered to the Traffic Manager weekly on a Monday, for these to be monitored and any queries raised in terms of deadlines and time allocation per job.
• Managing the internal and external approval process of all creative work, to ensure the consistency and efficiency of creative work being produced and presented to the client, whilst ensuring that it meets the overriding objective.
• Align the traffic departments services and scope to the business objectives and in turn to the overall business objectives to deliver on all projects in the company prescribed manner.
• Continue to evaluate/develop/improve and maintain the traffic system(s) and the project management processes. Keeping elements of the processes/system that work well and suggesting ways they can be improved.
• Conduct ongoing analysis of competitor activity in the pursuit of best pricing practices for the organization, whilst maintaining a database of freelancers to supplements workflow requirements
• Client focus and delivery (operational level)
• Assist in choosing most effective operational procedures to deliver on business objectives
• Conceptualism, plan, and direct effective departmental procedures to ensure streamlining of processes and procedures pertaining to activities being executed by the team.
• Assist in enforcing adherence to work-flow processes and deadlines.
• Assist in ensuring that all relevant parties are constantly informed of job status, any conflicts, delays, or any other unusual situations.
• Ensure incoming job requests contain all relevant information needed to assign a job to a resource.
• Maintain the Workbook job system (must have a thorough knowledge of Workbook or equivalent advertising agency traffic management system).
• Monitoring randomly selected jobs or jobs brought to your attention regarding checking that they are including relevant documents (briefs, amendments, external docs etc.)
• Attend key planning meetings for clients and help project manage new business pitches.
• Collaborate with teams/departments on process improvement and training new employees.
• Work with creative director(s) and/or designers to evaluate and assign projects.
• Keep creative team apprised of project priorities and due dates.
• Assists expedite and prioritise rush projects accordingly.
• Join in weekly status meetings with the different departments/teams.
• Interaction with print, TV, Art buying and radio production where necessary.
• Checking and/or updating the job status on workbook as necessary.
• Management of all meetings to establish requirements for the jobs briefed in
• Ensuring all relevant information is acquired and disseminated
• Management of job bags and customer requirements
• On time delivery of all plans
• Consultation at all levels to ensure the objectives are being met

Timeline management

• Evaluation and controls of deliverables
• Assisting to track job bags in the system vs turnaround times and deadlines
• Assisting to tracking of budgets vs client budgets in conjunction with the various teams

Cost control

• Assisting to managing outsourced resources to maintain costs in balance
• Assisting with weekly/monthly reporting to assess all the above

Delivery excellence.

• Manage staff to ensure delivery excellence, liaise with all outsourced agents to maintain a Penquin standard of excellence across all activities.
• Ensure that outsourced staffing costs are in line with proposed budgetary expense and signed off and agreed to by the Client Service Teams.
• Assists maintain workload data for monthly and quarterly metric output.
• Monitoring the time captured in chase by timesheet users. Ensuring that their time sheets are updated and that with notes are included on a weekly basis.
• Assist client service with time and resource requirements for cost estimates on non-retainer clients for advance approval on jobs briefed in.
• Assist checking briefs and artwork before distributing to client service teams and ensuring that all elements have been delivered.
• Assist Checking closing/billing of all jobs in the system.
• Engagement and communication
• Assist developing platforms within which to communicate to all other areas of the client service and production teams.
• Effectively contribute to the communication outcomes desired per brief per client.
• Approval process definition.
• Ensure that all stakeholders are communicated to effectively and timeously on all jobs
  
  

Experience level:

• At least 2 - 3 years in the traffic department and staff management experience, preferably in an advertising and marketing agency industry.
• Must be able to manage stress and deadlines in a controlled and professional manner.