The client onboarding process, built as a system.

Onboarding starts the moment the contract is signed, not the moment someone notices it was signed. Everything sales learned during the deal has to reach delivery in a structured form, or your team re-asks questions the client already answered.

• Signed agreement filed against the client record automatically
• Deal notes, scope, deliverables, and pricing pushed into the delivery record
• Named accountable owner assigned before anyone touches the work
• Internal handoff summary written once, in a fixed template

Automate: Signature event triggers the handoff record — no human has to notice the deal closed.

This is the phase agencies still do by hand, and it is the single largest source of onboarding delay. Channels, boards, folders, and permissions are deterministic — the same structure every time, derived from the client name and service tier.

• Client Slack or Teams channel created and staffed with the right roles
• Project board cloned from the service-tier template, dates shifted to the real start
• Drive or SharePoint folder tree created with correct sharing scopes
• Time-tracking, billing, and reporting records opened against the account

Automate: Fully. Provisioning should require zero clicks and finish before anyone opens a laptop.

The client's confidence peaks the day they sign and decays from there. A same-day welcome that names the next three dates converts excitement into trust instead of letting it cool into doubt.

• Welcome message from the named account lead, not a no-reply address
• The three dates that matter: intake due, kickoff call, first deliverable
• Who to contact for what, and the response-time standard you actually hold
• One link to the intake — never an attachment, never a chase

Automate: Templated and scheduled on provisioning, personalized from deal fields.

Asset chasing is where most agency onboarding actually dies. Replace the email thread with a single structured intake that collects everything at once and nudges on its own schedule.

• Brand assets, logos, fonts, and guidelines with explicit file requirements
• Platform access and credentials through a secure request, never plain email
• Audience, offers, competitors, past performance, and hard constraints
• Approval chain: who signs off, and who can overrule them

Automate: Automated reminders at day 2 and day 4; completion unlocks the kickoff invite.

A kickoff call where your own team is still forming opinions is a wasted meeting. Review internally first so the client meeting is about direction, not discovery.

• Intake reviewed and gaps flagged while there is still time to fix them
• Scope re-read against what sales promised; discrepancies surfaced now
• Draft 30-60-90 plan and success metrics prepared
• Capacity and staffing confirmed against real calendars

Automate: Partly — the checklist and its gating are automated; the judgment stays human.

Kickoff should confirm a plan, not build one. If the first thirty minutes are spent gathering information, phases one through five did not run.

• Restate scope, deliverables, and what is explicitly out of scope
• Walk the 30-60-90 plan and the metric each phase moves
• Confirm communication cadence, reporting day, and escalation path
• Assign client-side actions with owners and dates in writing

Automate: Agenda, invite, and recap generated from the account record.

Onboarding is not finished at kickoff. It is finished when the client has seen real output and the account has been reviewed once against the promises made during the sale.

• Ship one visible deliverable inside the first two weeks
• Reporting live and running on its stated cadence
• Day-30 review against the 30-60-90 plan, in writing
• Onboarding retro logged so the template improves for the next client

Automate: Reporting and review scheduling; the retro feeds the template automatically.