Jorge Arango of BootStudio writes in about his team's use of 37signals products:
About our company
BootStudio creates and manages engaging websites for large organizations in Central America (and beyond). We have a passion for simple, eloquent, standards-based interfaces that get the job done with a minimal amount of fuss. We've been around since 1995, when Internet access was starting to become commercially available in this region, so ours was one of the first web design firms in this part of the world.
The 37signals products we use, and why we like them
Ours is an (almost) entirely web-based business. We manage our day-to-day work on the 37signals suite (along with Google Apps and a few other web-based apps):
- Basecamp is our main project management space; it's where we share files, project notes, deadlines, pending tasks, checklists, etc. We love that all members of each project team—including clients—can have access to the latest information at any time, from anywhere.
- Highrise is where we manage everything "meta" about the company: contract negotiation, business development, human resources issues, etc. Most of these threads are centered on people, so Highrise makes an excellent control center and filing cabinet for these activities.
- Backpack is our intranet. It's where we update each other on our availability ("working remotely this afternoon"), document processes, and interesting news and developments about our industry.
- We also use Campfire as a replacement for IM, although much of our use of this app been overtaken by Backpack's Journal feature.
Last but certainly not least,
- Getting Real has been influential in the way we think about our work. Central America is a "developing market": a euphemism that means that expectations are high, and budgets low. We've had to learn to be nimble and efficient, and the Getting Real ethos has inspired and influenced us.
We like that the 37signals applications have consistent, elegant interfaces; it's been very easy for us to get new team members up-to-speed. The apps also have a well-considered feature set that strikes a smart balance between power with usability. For example, while Backpack isn't as flexible as Google Sites (which we evaluated, given we'd paid for it as part of Google Apps), the former provides the features we need without the complexity that comes with the richer feature set of the latter. We've found that with a bit of ingenuity we can do pretty much anything with these tools. (The one thing we haven't been able to work around is that the app UIs are presented exclusively in English. While this hasn't been too much of a problem for our clients, we can see it becoming more of an issue as we start doing more business with folks in other Spanish-speaking regions.)
The collaboration ecosystem
Over the years we've tried many solutions to manage our work, on- and offline. One of the issues we've had with many of the apps we've used before is that they weren't very open. As a result, it was very difficult to use the information that resided in one app from within another.
The 37signals products seem to have ushered in a new era in practical software for businesses of our size. For one thing, the "highly focused and elegant web app that solves real business needs" space that 37signals popularized has spawned a wide variety of solutions for all sorts of needs (e.g.: there are now front ends to version control systems, timekeeping apps, invoicing apps, etc.) For another, the fact that many of these apps (beginning with Basecamp and Backpack) expose APIs means that many of them can interoperate much more openly than was previously possible. This has been a boon for businesses such as ours, that want to pick-and-choose the components of their collaboration infrastructure.
A concrete example: we used to manage our team's time with Basecamp's built-in time tracking feature, using the third-party Timepost.app application for time entry. Following a growth spurt, we started needing more comprehensive timekeeping reports, so we added Harvest to our mix. Because both Harvest and Basecamp expose APIs, we were able to quickly import all of our projects and clients from Basecamp, and our team members just kept using Timepost.app as they had before. The three apps interoperate seamlessly, even though different companies produce them, and as a result we were able to implement this change over the course of an afternoon.
We're very excited by what we see as a growing ecosystem of apps that can be loosely linked together to create solutions that are "just right" for our needs. We are always exploring new components to this ecosystem, and our processes are consistently becoming more efficient as a result. (The main missing component right now is a good accounting app. Do you have any plans to develop a Quickbooks-killer? :-) )
A tip for other customers: think about information architecture
We've found that the most value can be obtained from these collaboration apps when everyone can easily find the information they need, when they need it. In order to achieve this, all team members need to be clear on where different items should be posted. Consistency is the name of the game, and over time our team has developed naming schemes that make it easier for us to know where to look for things later. Thinking carefully about the information architecture of the things we can customize in these tools—category names, project labeling schemes, message titles, etc.—has made a big difference in how usable (and useful) they are to us and to our clients.
