Managing Agency KPIs and Profitability with Amber Kemmis of Revenue River
Key Takeaways
- Different engagement models - retainers vs. projects - require different profitability measurement approaches and cannot use identical metrics
- Operational leaders should stay connected to client calls to maintain perspective on customer needs and avoid making disconnected decisions
- Accurate time tracking depends on team discipline and proper systems - data quality determines whether KPIs are meaningful
- Clear scope definition is foundational to profitability because it ensures alignment across sales, execution, and delivery teams
- Building hands-on client experience before moving into operations leadership creates credibility and empathy that improves decision-making
- Employee engagement tools like pulse surveys and peer recognition programs help with retention during competitive hiring markets
Gray MacKenzie talks with Amber Kemmis, Chief Operating Officer at Revenue River, about the operational metrics and management practices that drive agency profitability. Revenue River is a HubSpot agency that has evolved from traditional marketing services into RevOps and technical implementation. In this episode, Amber shares practical insights on measuring profitability across different service lines, managing scope effectively, and building an operations function that keeps the agency healthy.
Measuring Profitability Across Engagement Types
One of the central themes of the conversation is that not all agency work can be measured the same way. Revenue River runs both retainer engagements and project-based work, and Amber explains that these two models require fundamentally different profitability metrics.
Retainer work generates recurring revenue with predictable scope - but that predictability can mask profitability problems if scope creep goes unchecked. Project-based work has clearer start and end points but carries more revenue variability and higher risk of underestimating effort. Agencies that apply a single profitability framework to both models end up with misleading data that hides problems in one or both service lines.
Amber recommends breaking profitability analysis down by engagement type, service line, and even individual client. This granular view reveals which types of work generate the best margins and which consistently underperform. That data then informs decisions about pricing, packaging, and which types of engagements the agency should pursue more aggressively.
The Critical Role of Scope Management
Scope management comes up repeatedly as the foundation of agency profitability. Amber emphasizes that scope problems usually originate in the sales process - when the team sells an engagement without clearly defining what is included and what is not, the delivery team inherits a problem that erodes margins from day one.
Effective scope management requires alignment across three functions: sales, execution, and delivery. Sales needs to set clear expectations with clients about what the engagement covers. The execution team needs documented scope to plan their work accurately. And the delivery or account management team needs the authority to manage scope changes through a defined change order process rather than absorbing extra requests to keep clients happy.
When scope is well-defined and consistently managed, profitability becomes more predictable. When it is not, agencies find themselves doing significantly more work than they priced for, which shows up as poor utilization, squeezed margins, and team burnout.
Staying Connected to the Client Experience
Amber makes a point that resonates with many agency operations leaders: as you move into an operational role, it is easy to become disconnected from the client experience. When that happens, operational decisions start optimizing for internal efficiency at the expense of client outcomes.
Her solution is deliberate involvement in client calls. Not managing accounts day-to-day, but sitting in on enough client conversations to understand what clients are experiencing, what frustrations they have, and where the agency’s delivery is falling short. This direct exposure prevents the kind of ivory-tower decision-making that erodes client satisfaction over time.
The same principle applies to understanding team challenges. Amber’s path into operations started with hands-on client work, which gives her credibility when making operational changes that affect how the team delivers. Leaders who have done the work themselves can distinguish between legitimate process friction and resistance to change.
Time Tracking and Data Quality
No conversation about agency KPIs is complete without addressing time tracking, and Amber is candid about the challenges. Accurate time data is the foundation for utilization metrics, profitability analysis, and capacity planning - but getting teams to track time consistently and accurately remains one of the hardest operational disciplines to maintain.
The problem is not usually the tools. It is the habits. Teams that track time at the end of the week from memory produce data that is significantly less accurate than teams that log time throughout the day. And inaccurate time data makes every downstream metric unreliable. Amber stresses that investing in time tracking discipline - through training, accountability, and making the process as frictionless as possible - pays dividends across every operational metric the agency tracks.
Navigating Talent Retention
The conversation also touches on talent retention during a period of intense competition for skilled marketing professionals. Revenue River uses tools like 15Five for pulse surveys and peer recognition, creating regular touchpoints that help leadership understand team sentiment before issues escalate into departures.
Amber notes that retention starts with hiring the right people and setting clear expectations, but sustaining it requires ongoing attention to career development, workload balance, and culture. Agencies that only think about retention when someone gives notice are already behind.
Resources Mentioned
- Amber Kemmis on LinkedIn - COO, Revenue River
- Revenue River - HubSpot agency and RevOps consultancy
- Revenue River Careers - Open positions
- 15Five - Employee engagement and performance management
- Teamwork - Project management platform
- Airtable - Reporting and data analysis
- BugHerd - Web development bug tracking and client feedback