The direct answer
Agencies lose time when client context has to be reconstructed repeatedly. Every kickoff starts from zero because nobody stored the answers. The fix is not another intake form. It is a system that captures the context once and reuses it, so your team stops asking for the same information twice.
The fact: U.S. workers spend 61% of their time on work about work, and believe they could save a full working day each week if their processes improved.
SOURCE: Asana, Anatomy of Work (U.S. findings) — Read the findings
Onboarding is where that cost is easiest to see. The same questions, asked by four different people, answered on four different documents.
The fact: Salesforce found that 86% of business buyers expect sales reps to act as trusted advisors, while 84% say reps don't take the time to understand them.
SOURCE: Salesforce, State of the Connected Customer (6th edition) — Read the report
The structured-context play
Build one Foundation per client: voice, audience, offers, history, and the questions you keep asking. The system holds it. Kickoff meetings stop being archaeology. New team members stop re-interviewing the client. The answers live in one place.
What changes on the team
Account managers keep the relationship. Research, briefs, and the context hunt become system work. The client feels it within weeks, because the questions change from "tell me about your business" to decisions that move it.
Where to start
Take your last client. List every question you asked more than once. Put the answers in one Foundation. Run the next week of work through it and count what you stopped re-asking.