How GetFave.com uses Highrise to manage sales leads

Lindsay Saewitz, Director of Sales at Fave Media, discusses how the company uses Highrise:

What does your company/business do?
GetFave.com is a local business directory that lets the consumer experience the business before walking through the door. We let businesses express themselves through video, pictures, and other rich content while also helping them get found on the web.

Why do you need Highrise?
We use Highrise to manage our sales leads that are generated through site registrations.

How do you use Highrise and why do you like it?
Through a feature our programmers have developed, we can feed leads into highrise on demand. Then, these leads are randomly distributed to our sales reps (users/people) and tasks to call the leads are automatically created. The sales reps use HR to manage the entire sales process, from calling and setting meetings to taking meeting notes and referring back to them. We use tags to categorize the leads. I like the note taking and I also like the ability to create tasks.

What did you use before and why did you switch? 
We used Salesforce.com before I was at the company. I personally do not have a lot of experience with salesforce but in briefly using it I felt it was overcomplicated. Highrise was recommended by one of our programmers.

Any tips or tricks for other customers?
I love the addition of color coding for the tasks. It’s much easier to find what you’re looking for.

Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.

[Case Study] Software startup eliminates paper trail by using Highrise to track beta testers

David Mytton writes in to tell us how his software startup uses Highrise to keep track of beta testers:

I am in the initial stages of building a software startup. Our first product is an application which monitors server health - CPU usage, memory use, etc - and alerts you when there are problems. The product entered private beta testing last week and I am slowly getting new people signed up to give it a go. The website is www.serverdensity.com.

We're doing this in a very personal way. I initially invited just a couple of contacts who I thought might be interested but we have since branched out to a wider audience. That said, we are still giving out invite codes as individually as possible and conducting feedback calls over the phone.

Since we're inviting people over the weeks, I need to follow up with them at different times to ensure they have enough time to try out the product. I also need to keep a record of when I am actually due to call them and what their feedback is. I am using Highrise to do most of this.

When a new user is contacted, I enter their details into Highrise and make a note of when I e-mailed them. I schedule a followup if I don't hear back in a few days and equally make a note when they do sign up. I am able to use the tasks to remind me when I need to get in touch to arrange the feedback call and then when the call will take place.

We use FogBugz to handle all customer care and bug tracking so send communication through that. I link up the Highrise contact with the case ID in FogBugz. This gives me a tactical overview of where we're at in the feedback process through Highrise with the actual correspondence and feedback logged in FogBugz. Once the call is done, I can summarise the feedback in the notes for that contact in Highrise.

All of these contacts are of course linked to a single case for the beta feedback. This gives me an easy way to view all the beta feedback contacts and notes in one go and keep on top of talking to customers and working on changes based on the feedback.

If I didn't have Highrise, I would have to resort to e-mail histories to find out where we're at, who was invited when and so on. Using Highrise centralises everything which means I'm more efficient and can spend time developing rather than dealing with the paper trail.

Not only that, but I can do all of this using the free account so that I can keep my startup costs to a minimum but I know that through regular use, I will be able to easily upgrade at a later date - hopefully once my company has started generating revenue. When you're just starting out, it is important to keep costs as low as possible without compromising on what needs to be done; Highrise makes that possible.

Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.

[Case study] How Hello Viking uses 37signals tools to collaborate with marketers and ad agencies around the world

Joseph Rueter, Idea Engineer at Hello Viking, writes about how his virtual company uses Basecamp to work with teams and clients all over the world.

About our company
Hello Viking provides consulting, creative and production services to marketers, ad agencies, design and PR firms and media companies. Launched in June 2007, Hello Viking has collaborated with over a dozen clients and 40 freelancers to create brand strategy, design, advertising concepts, information architecture, websites and marketing materials for PricewaterhouseCoopers, 3M, BlueCross BlueShield, Audi, Borders, GM, Pillsbury, Decora Cabinets and other organizations.

The 37signals products we use, and why we like them
We are entirely virtual, working with teams and clients all over the world. We use Apple products for calendaring and messaging, but the bulk of our project management and file maintenance is done via 37signals:

Basecamp is our core. We use the Writeboards for early strategy brainstorming. Messaging is critical—it’s how we evolve and develop presentations, IA and other communal documents with multiple authors in different time zones. To Do lists keep everyone on track, especially during QA sessions and beta launches. Our clients have also appreciated Basecamp—in fact, one of them signed up after working with it through us. The simplicity of Basecamp’s interface means anyone can figure out what they need to do immediately. We haven’t had a single client get confused logging-in or viewing and approving files; it’s very reassuring from that perspective. We really appreciate being able to turn files “on/off” for privacy as projects evolve, too. (The only thing we haven’t really dug into is Chat, as we’re all addicted to other IM platforms.)

Highrise is our new business lifeline. Keeping the phones ringing is a constant pressure, and everyone on the core team is responsible for developing leads. Highrise helps maintain order and facilitates a unified system and organization for business development. Of course, you need to provide the effort—it’s only as good as the information and time you put in; but Highrise has made it very easy to stay on top of leads and prepare for pitches. We love the BCC “dropbox” feature.

Getting Real is one of our top five recommended books to collaborators and clients alike. We really appreciate the concise, clear perspective—even when we don’t necessarily agree with it. There are several copies floating around the Minneapolis office and it’s not unusual for someone to quote Getting Real at some point during strategy and early project definition planning.

It’s pretty easy to say Hello Viking would not exist as strongly as it does without 37signals. The tools we use require almost zero training to use, which (again) is wonderful when we’re bringing a new employee or client into an ongoing project. Your team gets to work immediately, versus spending time figuring out how to use the project management system or track hours. The best compliment we could make about Basecamp or Highrise is that they require very little thinking to use.

Oftentimes, when we’re architecting an idea or even as far along as coding an interface, we refer to 37signals products: “Make the tabs open like they do in Basecamp.” There’s such a universal clarity to these products that we aspire to emulate in our own work.

Tip: Using “Dates to remember” in Highrise to track “Member Since” dates

Mark Bottita, Publisher of Elder Forest Publishing Group, on how his team uses the "Dates to remember" feature in Highrise:

Highrise helps Elder Forest Publishing Group track supplier relationships

37signal applications do a great job of making our “Member Since…” dates readily accessible. But most other suppliers do not. By using the “Dates to remember” section of Highrise to list these dates, as well as dates for planned future upgrades, we keep everyone informed of what our history and future plans are for all apps/products being utilized across any particular supplier.

In this age of flexible supply chain networks, it is important that all six divisions at Elder Forest Publishing Group have quick access to this information. And we can now do this for each supplier right on their contact page.

Thanks for a great suite of productivity tools, and much continued success for 2009 and beyond.

Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.

How a business school student uses Highrise and Backpack to aid in his internship hunt

Neil Kelty is in business school and is using Highrise and Backpack to help him in his internship search. Details below.

I'm a freshman at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business studying Economic Consulting & Public Policy Analysis, and I'm in the hunt for an internship this summer.
My search process actually started in Backpack where I created a page with a list of all the internships I had found after scouring the Internet and reaching out to personal contacts. Using that list I was able to narrow my search down to 10-15 organizations that I feel would offer me the best possible fit and experience.

This is where Highrise comes in, because it allows me to mange the organizations offering internships, store all the required documents, track my progress using tags, and keep myself on target with tasks. One of the biggest helps has been the ability to customize the task categories. I've been able to create individual labels for applications, cover Letters, essays, and reference letter requests. Additionally, the "Dates to Remember" field allows me to enter the due date for each application and then Highrise automatically generates a task on my to-do list a week before I must submit the application.

Without Highrise, I'd still be sputtering along with a series of file and folders on my Mac. That process would dramatically slow me down, as I'd have to keep paper to do lists all over the place (and paper doesn't send you an email reminding you to get on the ball, but Highrise does).

Above: Custom Task categories in Highrise.

Above: Using Cases in Highrise.

Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.

Highrise customer video: Workforce Language Services

The new Highrise marketing site features some new customer videos we filmed recently, including this one from Workforce Language Services.

Workforce Language Services helps improve corporate communication in the workplace through onsite language training, translation and interpretation services. Highrise helps them keep track of over 13,000 contacts.

[Case study] How record producer Bill Moriarty uses Highrise to keep track of album projects

Record Producer Bill Moriarty and his manager Chris Radwanski use Highrise to keep track of all of Bill's album projects. Bill tells us all about it below.

Why do you need Highrise?
I'm in the studio most of the time so my phone's off, the internet's off... I'm making sure the tape machine's running right and the band's playing their best.

My manager, Chris, deals with all the communications, logistics and a lot of planning on every album I make. With Highrise I can login and see all the progress that's been made toward getting a band in the studio and then follow up with the artist about the music we're going to make.

Despite living in the same city we rarely see each other in person, we barely have meetings, we don't have conference calls, we don't do IM… Highrise is where everything goes. It's how Chris & I stay in sync with what was said, what was promised, potential projects, and where I'm currently in an album's progress. If we worked only in email all these vital communications would just be lost in the email noise. Using Highrise makes us focus just on what's important to making records and running our company.

Which features do you use most?
We actually use Cases the most. Since it's just two of us we don't need the full project management of Basecamp. Besides individual contacts we make a "Company" for each band and a "Case" for each album. Everything important that gets said about an album goes into the album's "case."

On average, Chris is working with 15 potential records at a time. He titles it, oh, for example, "lead:Drink Up Buttercup's new album" and uploads demos for me to listen to, notes about how the band wants to make their album, possible recording dates, where in the world this may be recorded, and assigns me todo's for when & how to get back to the artist about their project. Once that lead becomes a definite project we just delete "lead:" from the Case's title.

We have contacts and companies for the artists, labels, and musicians we speak with regularly. On DHH's blog advice we don't put everyone in Highrise; just the people that matter to running our business. Again, it's about focusing on what's important: doing one thing at a time and doing it well.

[Case study] BootStudio uses 37signals tools to build websites for large organizations in Central America

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.)

Author uses Highrise to manage contacts (and integrates it with HelpSpot too)

Author Stephane Grenier loves Highrise and writes in to tell us why:

Thank you very much Highrise for making such an amazing product. I'm using it with my assistants to manage the contacts for the marketing of my new best selling book Blog Blazers. Not only does it allow us to manage who's who, we also use it to manage who's been sent books to review, who to follow-up with, and when to follow-up with them. Basically it's a great tool to keep track of our marketing efforts for the book. I can't imagine being without it!

What's also very exciting for us is that we use HelpSpot to manage internal emails, and they've created an integration plugin for Highrise right into their products. So as we email people, we can do what's called a "Live Lookup" right into the software and get the benefits of Highrise with our email client.

So not only are we able to leverage the power of Highrise to manage our contacts, we're also able to leverage the power of their web services!

Thank you to the fine folks at Highrise, I can't imagine launching my book with any other tool!!

Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.

[Case study] How a home design and plan provider uses Highrise

Design Connection's Jamison Kissh on how his company uses Highrise.

What does your company do?
Our company is a home design and plan provider based in Thomaston, Connecticut. We began by providing custom home design services to the local building industry in 1985. Since our inception over 20 years ago, we have grown into a nationally recognized plan service providing house plans and garage plans in a variety of styles and sizes. From the beginning, our mission was to provide unique, quality, economical home plans to consumers and builders. 

Why do you need Highrise?
I use Highrise to keep track of all sorts of people; those that advertise on our site and even people that call us and ask some questions. This way it allows me to keep all their information together since sometimes it may take days to gather answers to a caller’s questions.

How do you use Highrise and why do you like it?
I use Highrise to keep track of prospective customer’s emails to me as well as remind me to follow up with them if need be.

Which features do you use the most?
Well that would have to be the dropbox followed by a close second with notes.

What did you use before and why did you switch?
I tried a few programs as well as just a simple spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was a mess and nothing else offered anything nearly as useful as Highrise.

Get specific. Tell us a story about a project or situation where Highrise helped you out.
Highrise proves its self everyday when I receive an email or phone call with someone that I had been in correspondence with but had forgotten about. I quickly open Highrise and search their name in the nice fast search utility. This way it reminds me of their information and allows for a personalized phone call as well as eliminating the need of asking them to remind me who they are. Another way this helps me out is if my boss loses a phone message that I had provided him I still have a backup of the numbers, addresses, and any other information provided to me during the conversation.

Any tips or tricks for other customers?
Not really anything that’s not self explanatory. Other than use my favorite tool the dropbox often.

Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.