South Africa, Jan. 29 -- It's the quiet irony of most new client-agency relationships: everyone is busy, but no one is aligned.

Once procurement wraps up the technical details and the champagne glasses are cleared away, marketing teams are left to manage the partnership without a shared playbook.

Agencies dive straight into delivery, keen to prove their worth. Clients let them, desperate to get work out the door.

The result? Momentum without method.

Less room for missteps

In a market where budgets are tighter, pitch cycles are shorter and internal teams are stretched thinner than ever, there's even less room for missteps.

Yet proper onboarding-the unglamorous work of aligning on ways of working, decision-making processes and what su...