How agencies handle complex pitches with dependable digital delivery

It’s 9:00 am on launch day. Your client has just put £50,000 behind ads. At 9:15, the site crashes. The ads keep running; every click goes nowhere. By lunch, the campaign is a write-off and by the afternoon, procurement is asking why reliability wasn’t in the plan.

This isn’t rare. Reliability failures burn budgets, erode trust, and block bigger contracts. Agencies aren’t just judged on creative anymore; they’re judged on whether the web or mobile platform holds up under pressure.  UK firms report six-figure losses from launch-day failures; procurement teams now probe uptime and SLAs at pitch time.

The pitch problem: clients now ask about reliability

Ten years ago, only enterprise-grade agencies focused on uptime, SLAs, and monitoring. Today, every client does.

• SMEs can’t afford to waste ad spend on downtime.
• Scale-ups need technical maturity to win investor confidence.
• Enterprises treat compliance and SLAs as procurement minimums.

Agencies aren’t just competing on creativity; they’re competing on credibility.

What downtime really costs

Clients know the cost of being offline. Agencies that can’t quantify reliability lose trust fast.

• Average downtime is often quoted at ~$5,600 (£4,192) per minute (Gartner, [add year])
• 41% of enterprises report downtime costs of $1M–$5M per hour (ITIC).
• 47% of users expect a site to load in <2 seconds (SiteBuilderReport, 2025) 

Even mid-market clients benchmark agencies against these realities.

The credibility gap

When procurement asks:

• “What uptime can you guarantee?”
• “Do you have SLA-backed commitments?”
• “How is downtime monitored and escalated?”

…vague answers sink pitches. A rival who talks in numbers, not promises, looks safer.

The fix: enterprise delivery without building an in-house ops team

You don’t need a full in-house engineering function. You do need the delivery practices buyers expect:

• SLOs (Service Level Objectives): measurable uptime/performance/error budgets
• SLAs (Service Level Agreements): response + escalation with credits if missed
• Transparent reporting: dashboards and monitoring clients can see.

These tools don’t just reduce risk; they increase client confidence. They’re the difference between hoping a project holds up under pressure and proving it will.

How Aecor helps

Most agencies can’t justify 24/7 ops. We set up the standard and prove it on a live slice of work so you can answer procurement with numbers.

• Plug-and-play expertise: 60+ engineers across the UK and global hubs.
• Enterprise practices built in: monitoring, DevOps, and uptime tracking.
• SLA-backed guarantees: offer formal commitments to clients.
• Transparency: full reporting via Jira, Slack, and dashboards.
• Proven trust: used by clients in fintech, utilities, and sports.

The payoff for agencies

• Win bigger contracts—procurement takes you seriously.
• Reduce churn—reliability builds long-term trust.
• Shorter sales cycles—compliance questions answered up front.
• Fewer launch-day dramas—teams stay focused on the work.

Run a reliability check before your next launch or pitch.

Book a free consultation to de-risk your delivery and strengthen client trust.