Brand Guardians, a small branding agency, recently published "Small is the new big.. (or how we run a distributed agency)." The post explains how the agency uses the entire 37signals product suite to get things done.
We are small, but we have a number of offices, on several continents. We have a range of clients – from HUGE to tiny. But the way we work now – well I don’t think we could have done it even 5 years ago very easily.We use a suite of tools that help us stay small, stay connected, keep us apart (in a good way – less travelling), help us manage our business, organise diaries, manage our clients, keep them connected, store all our crucial documents and data, and most importantly help us to be creative. Sounds good eh? And it doesn’t cost much…
The four core products (which all run in a browser) – Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, and Campfire do everything we need, and help us do things better, without the need for IT support or training. You should check them out to see all the things they do, but the most important thing they are is SIMPLE...
The benefits are that they allow us to manage our clients and their work, and our time and our ‘stuff’ more efficiently, and quicker, and easier. They essentially allow us to get on with what we are paid to do, help solve our clients problems with minimal problems...We have found that by spending less time and effort managing our business, we can spend more time and effort helping our clients to run their businesses.
Great to see a company using the whole 37signals buffalo, if you will. The post provides more details and also includes this list of what the company doesn't have now that it uses 37signals (and other similar) tools.
What we don’t have (now) is:1. Any IT staff – or indeed any ‘junior’ staff at all
2. Big servers with VPN and tricky stuff like that
3. Large maintenance agreements to manage big hot servers and ‘kit’
4. Trouble finding stuff like files and presentations and pictures etc..
5. Anxiety about ‘stuff breaking or crashing’
6. large pieces of capital investment
7. No time to talk and meet with clients
8. There are probably more things but I’m bored with this list now…
