In 5 Ways to Build Your Virtual Office [Washington Post], author Dan Tynan says, "Running a virtual business is easier (and cheaper) than ever, if you have the right tools." And those right tools include Highrise and Basecamp.
We can't afford to hire an administrative assistant, which is why we use Highrise. Nominally an online CRM tool, 37signals' clever Web app does nearly everything a personal secretary might do except go out for coffee and pick up our dry cleaning.Of course, the last thing you need is yet another address book to populate. Fortunately, Highrise makes the job easy: Just bcc e-mail messages to a special 'dropbox' address, and your recipient's address joins your contacts database automatically. You can then copy and paste their phone number, physical address, and other info at your leisure. (You can also upload V-cards or import whole address books from Outlook and other contact managers.)
But Highrise is really more about organizing your work life and keeping you on track. You can create a "case" for each project, associate contacts with each case, add notes and upload documents, share the case with colleagues, and add tasks for each person to perform. Highrise is free for two users and up to 250 contacts; paid plans that allow multiple users to swap files, collaborate on cases, and share thousands of contacts range from $24 to $99 a month.
When we need full-on project management, we also use 37signals' Basecamp, which lets us create milestones, view them on a calendar, track successive versions of the same document, and do a whole lot more. You can manage one project with unlimited users for free; for multiple projects, prices start at $24 a month.
Read the rest of 5 Ways to Build Your Virtual Office to learn more about the other recommended tools.
