TurnHere is an online video production and marketing services company — with a network of more than 7,000 independent filmmaking pros around the world — that creates online video for both big brands and small businesses. Below, Morgan Brown of TurnHere explains how the company uses Basecamp.
Why do you need Basecamp?
Life at TurnHere is fast and furious. Over the last year and a half the company has doubled in size while responding to the overwhelming demand for online video content. It’s the proverbial rebuilding the engine while the tractor trailer speeds down the freeway. As our team grew, email quickly became inefficient in coordinating work needed to build our products, internal back office systems and marketing programs. We use Basecamp to track product development and launches, marketing programs and collateral, operational documents and checklists and more. Using Basecamp has improved communication, reduced email clutter and wasted time trying to track down the latest versions of documents, specs and web site copy. It has allowed us to keep on top of rapid change and keep project teams on the same page even as we’ve grown.
What features do you use the most?
The two features we use the most are the messages and the Writeboards. Basecamp is great at reducing email by keeping conversations in message threads for specific projects. We use messages regularly to track changes, get project status updates and capture business owner approval on requirements, specifications and launches. Messages are essential to our internal communication.
Our second favorite feature is Writeboards. We use Writeboards to ensure that our operational policies remain living documents that adapt to the ever-changing business environment. The Writeboards let managers update documents on the fly, track previous revisions and allow for collaboration across different groups, such as operations and customer service.
A specific story
TurnHere recently launched a new small business focused online web site that required the use of two outside user experience consultants, an outside designer and an outside copywriter to go along with our internal marketing, product and technology teams. Using Basecamp allowed our teams to work seamlessly together to launch the project on time. Using messages, to dos, milestones and writeboards each group stayed up-to-date on the latest developments in terms of business requirements, site architecture, copy and design changes and more. It would’ve been much more difficult to coordinate all of those groups without Basecamp.
A favorite trick
Because we use messages so often we’ve become good at Textile markup to make communicating in messages even clearer. Simple tagging to create numbered lists, tables, and different font sizes really maximize your ability to communicate via messages. Learning Textile is definitely a handy trick to make Basecamp even better at communicating complex thoughts, detailed requirements and requests such as Web site copy changes and more. (Ed. Note: The new Basecamp messages and comments editor makes customizing messages a lot easier, but you can still use Textile if you prefer.)
The TurnHere team.
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