The first week of every month goes to reports. An account executive logs into Meta Ads Manager, Google Ads, GA4 and LinkedIn for each client, exports numbers, pastes them into a slide template and writes a commentary. Multiply that by twenty clients and a full person is doing nothing but reporting.
The rest of the month has its own leaks. Posts for each client are approved on WhatsApp and then scheduled one account at a time. Leads from Meta lead forms sit in the ad account until someone downloads them and emails a spreadsheet to the client, by which time the lead is a day old. Retainer invoices go out late because nobody has checked which deliverables were completed.
Marketing agency automation fixes the plumbing: data pulled from the ad platforms by API every night, posts fanned out to every client account from one place, leads delivered to the client the moment they arrive, and deliverables tracked against the retainer.