Melanie Orndorff, Account Manager at Trigger, an entertainment marketing and interactive design company. She writes to tell us how the company unites its two offices, one in Los Angeles and the other in Shanghai, with 37signals products:
At Trigger, we design, develop, and deploy games, websites, and social media applications for clients such as Sony, Paramount, Fox, and Universal Pictures. It's fun work, and it can also be pretty hectic. We use a few 37signals products here at Trigger, but Basecamp and Highrise have proven most useful for our team.Previously, we would send a huge volume of work assignment emails, project questions, and replies back and forth between our Los Angeles and Shanghai offices. Since many of our team members in Shanghai are not English-speaking, most of those emails would need to be read and translated before work could begin. It could get confusing, and somehow emails always seemed to get lost.
With Basecamp, our project managers in both offices (plus some team members in Portland, Seattle, and Las Vegas) are able to keep all of the communications in one place. Email volume has dropped, and team members are more informed. Because of this, we've been able to take on far more projects than we could handle in the past.
We love being able to discuss projects collaboratively between the offices. Because the messages are displayed in chronological sequence, we know that everyone has the most current information. When updates to work requests are needed, we can follow up with additional instructions and each developer and manager gets the info.
Learn how Trigger uses Highrise after the jump.
Highrise, on the other hand, is instrumental in our sales department. I'd been a Backpack user since its release, but quickly saw the benefits in working in Highrise. I love the daily task emails that include contact info. In addition, the Dashboard is so helpful when I'm putting together weekly summaries for our sales meeting...No more wondering who I've contacted in the previous week.The best feature of Highrise, though, is the little line that appears after I've added a note, reminding me to add a follow-up task. I can't think of how many times that's prompted me to set a reminder for myself or schedule a follow-up with a client. When we're busy, it's so easy to forget to set a "next action" that having it built-in is a lifesaver.
I've attached a couple of photos of the team, as well. The photo of the LA group shows us at our company go-kart races. Yep, we've actually got free time now that we're on Basecamp!
Trigger's Los Angeles office.
Trigger's Shanghai office.
Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.
