Jay Owen started Design Extensions 10 years ago (1999), while he was still in high school (17 yrs old). The company focus on small to medium sized businesses with web site design and graphic design services. Below he details how Basecamp has helped him grow his business.
How do you use Basecamp?
Before Basecamp, I did most of the work myself and could only juggle a few projects at a time.
With Basecamp, we are currently maxing out the 35 project account level (about to upgrade). We went from a 1 man shop doing under 50k/year to a 5 man shop doing over 250k/year. Basecamp allows us such flexibility and ease of communication, that we don't even have a physical office. Myself and my team work from home (or anywhere with a good wifi connection) and are able to seamlessly communicate with Basecamp and Campfire all day. Basecamp has become a key part of our business and helped us grow to where we are today.
Which features do you use most?
Milestones and Time are the two features we use the most. Milestones help us map out major assignments each day of the week for various members of our team. Using the Milestones overview page, we can easily take a glance at the company as a whole or individuals to see who is assigned what and we are on our schedule. The time tab lets us keep an eye on how much time is being spent on each project and account for it at the end of the week.
Tell us a story about a specific project/situation where Basecamp helped you out.
When I started Design Extensions over 10 years ago, our projects were managed via e-mail. This worked for a while but only allowed for so many projects to be managed at once. Even with a good calendar and organized network files, it wasn't ideal.
When we signed up for Basecamp, 5 years ago, we had no idea how much it would revolutionize our workflow and allow us to grow. With Basecamp, we are able to easily work with clients, employees, and contractors all over the world with ease. It's easy enough for newbies to pick-up quickly and has just the right feature combination to get things done - on time and in order.
Any tips or tricks for other customers?
Once a project moves from a production status to more of a maintenance/on-going project that may not be accessed on a regular basis, but we still want to leave active, we move them to the company "ZZ Maintenance." This helps separate the projects we are in and out of every day from accounts we might only be in once a month.
We are in Basecamp, Highrise, and Campfire every day. Highrise is for pre-sale or individual communications outside of an active project, Basecamp is for active projects, and Campfire keeps our team together in multiple locations.
Anything else?
We are often approached by other sites and services that claim to offer "more features" than Basecamp. What each of these companies fails to understand is that the joy of Basecamp is not that it offers more features than anyone out there, but that it does what we need to get the job done and nothing more.
The joy of Basecamp is in its simplicity and focus. Features for features sake are not a bonus, they are a burden. 37signals understands this extremely well and it shines in each every product produced.
