37signals Product Blog

Eldercare companies improve efficiency with 37signals tools

Aging Wisely was founded in 1998 by Florida Elder Law Attorney Linda Chamberlain. She saw the varied needs of elders and their families and formed Aging Wisely so families would have help navigating care options. In 2005, she formed EasyLiving, Inc., a private duty home health care company serving individuals and families in Pinellas County, Florida with home care, companionship and senior transportation. Below, she explains how her companies use Backpack.

Our companies serve seniors in their homes and therefore have a very mobile work force. The families of our customers are all over the country and world. Employees are rarely in an office setting and communication and coordination are vital. 37signals tools have helped improve communication and efficiency. Because the products are so intuitive, employees didn’t experience the frustrations and learning curve that they did with other solutions we had tried.

Both companies use Backpack extensively, which has replaced accessing a server for documents or long strings of emails that become cumbersome. Our team can access the documents they need, share notes and information from virtually anywhere with web access. Aging Wisely’s care managers use iphones, so they can pull up information just about anywhere.

EasyLiving benefits from the shared calendar for managing time off, on-call schedules and trainings. With 24/7 services, client emergencies and communicating office happenings to a large number of fields staff, this is vital.

A couple of specific examples of how we use 37signals tools:

Our care management team at Aging Wisely is comprised of experts in the field of eldercare, with diverse specializations. We serve as resources for our clients and need to be up to date on everything from new healthcare requirements to latest Alzheimer’s research and what products can help our clients age in place. To do this well, we need to be able to share articles, training information, links, etc. We have different pages on Backpack for different topics, making it easy not only to share the information but to access it any time.

Our team is known for its expertise in the community and gets asked to do presentations for a variety of groups. We often do these speaking engagements together or work on the presentations and materials together. Our Director of Communications works remotely, but can collaborate from anywhere with ease using these tools. When we plan a presentation, team members will post ideas and work on input to the Power Point and/or handouts using Backpack.

My tip for other customers: For teams who aren’t used to using collaborative tools it can be a challenge to switch the mindset and get less email-dependent. Over time, though, people will see the benefits and develop new habits. Do a little demo for everyone and explain how the tools will make life easier. One of the great things about these tools is that they are pretty intuitive, so you don’t need any major training and the learning curve is minimal, but it helps to explain what the purpose and benefits are.

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

Why iPhone app developer tap tap tap thinks Backpack is "invaluable"

tap tap tap's John Casasanta creates iPhone apps and recently published a list of tools that help the members of his “virtual” office collaborate in an effective way. He writes, "Out of all the apps and services I use throughout the day, I find myself spending most of my time in Backpack."

37signals’ Backpack has become an invaluable tool for our company. For each of our projects, we have one or more Backpack pages associated with it where we keep various lists and notes for the project. I say “project” versus “app” because we have several things in the works that affect more than one app (like social sharing, for instance).

The kinds of information that we store in Backpack are pretty varied. Here are some examples of what we keep in ours:

• to-do lists of features for our upcoming app versions
• bug lists
• brainstormings
• lists of design sessions for each app
• product definitions, specifications, and notes
• app mockups and new feature mockups

...

One of the things I like most about Backpack is its freeform nature and that you can easily adapt it to whichever way works best for you. There are many similar services that try to put too many constraints and restrictions on how you structure your information but with Backpack you have a lot of freedom in this regard. A Backpack page for one of our apps is very unlikely to look like one for another one of our apps and that’s a good thing… the teams are free to organize the information for each project in ways that best suit them and Backpack goes a long way in helping us do that.

Learn more about how tap tap tap uses Backpack and other tools.

DTS International: "The 37signals Suite takes the useless shit and clutter out of productivity solutions"

Trevor O'Sullivan, General Manager at DTS International, recently wrote us:

We have officially switched over to the 37signals Suite as of the last 3 weeks and we're loving it — thanks for building such an awesome product and taking the useless shit and clutter out of productivity solutions.

We followed up with Trevor to find out more about how his team is using the Suite. His response is below.

The search begins
We are a multifaceted company with several focuses all within the training and development market. Initially, we werte only looking for a CRM and I started looking at products around the place like Highrise and other online CRM tools - we were then using a product hosted on our own server. This search started in late 2009 during our Christmas holiday season in Australia but never went anywhere as I decided it was all too hard!

On initial review, I thought Highrise was too "entry level" and simply lacked features we needed like reporting and other common CRM features. This year we hired an absolute gun of a sales person and she has made a huge difference to our business. Since most of her time is spent telephone prospecting she came to me with her concerns/challenges with the CRM and how difficult it was making her job to fill in lots of fields or data we never used, the slow search capabilities (as we had around 20000 contacts) and the all around cumbersome nature of our existing CRM.

Hence I started looking again at CRM options and came back to Highrise. Still thinking it lacked key features without using third party applications and API function development from our end we decided to "try it out" it for a week. Once that week was over, our team was begging me to make the switch all the way. So we did!

Just after upgrading to a paid account 37signals came out with their new Suite offering and we had to have it — as we had started to play with the free version of Basecamp and Backpack and had fallen in love with them too!

Highrise
We have a database of around 10,000 customers and prospects (since making the switch we did a massive data clean and removed useless and duplicates from our CRM). For us, it is about tracking the interactions with customers and prospects, hence we use the notes and email dropbox heavily. We have started using the Tasks and Deals sections more and more to keep track of the deals we have in the pipeline and things we need to get done with different contacts.

Basecamp
We have just completed a business plan for our business (yes, I know plans are guesses!). But, for me, the business planning process is about the analysis and getting a feel for what we have to work with and then I can make better decisions in the moment. The plan/analysis produced around 8 pages of todos for us to work on to improve our business.

Every time I looked at the list is was so intimidated I stuck it back on the desk and looked for something else to keep me busy! One day I was watching the Basecamp videos and thought, "Let's set up a project." At that time, we only had the free version so had to use one project called "business plan todos" and divide up the list with our team, then create a rule in the business that at 4:30pm we stop what we are doing and spend 30 minutes to cross one thing of the list. It has been great we are so far in front of where I thought we would be. It is amazing and our team loves it because the can see how they are contributing to the business!

How The Intersect Fund uses 37signals products to help aspiring business owners

Joe Shure, Associate Director of The Intersect Fund, describes how his team uses 37signals products to help aspiring business owners:

We help aspiring business owners — mostly immigrants and low-income individuals — get started. We teach them how to manage cash flow, find customers and set their businesses up right. We also offer small loans to help them buy things like hot dog carts, new truck tires and sewing machines.

Since starting the company in 2008, we've served more than 150 clients through our business training, lending and consulting services. We now have offices in two New Jersey cities — New Brunswick and Orange — but we began as a rag-tag bunch of college students, borrowing space and building contacts as we grew. We got where we are now through lots of work, a little luck, and 37signals.

Getting the word out was our first step. In the beginning, we met with community leaders, church pastors and potential funders on what seemed like a daily basis. Lacking an office, a staff, or even a file cabinet, we leaned on Highrise to help us manage our new relationships.

Now, we use Campfire to keep in touch at the office, Highrise to keep up with clients and Backpack to track tasks and commitments.

(Pictured at left: Soneni, a second-hand clothing store owner and Intersect Fund client.)

Consider a hypothetical client named Tamara — a seamstress — as an example:

Oct. 2010: Tamara enrolls in our business training course. Along the way, we keep tabs on certain goals: is she grasping the material? Is she writing her business plan? Is she gaining confidence in her abilities? The instructor makes weekly Highrise notes that help our team understand how Tamara is doing.

Dec. 2010: Having graduated, Tamara seeks a small loan to purchase a sewing machine. Her financials are in order, but our loan committee wonders about how responsible she is. They check her Highrise file and read her instructor's notes: turns out she came to every class on time and did great work. They approve her loan.

Feb. 2011: Things are going well, and we meet with Tamara to help her set business milestones: she wants to design a new handbag line, find 10 new customers and purchase a domain name.

(Pictured at right: "My co-founder, Rohan Mathew, and I standing in front of a bunch of oranges.")

Six weeks later, our team member Pasquale invites Tamara to the office for another meeting. He doesn't know her too well, but he can get up to speed in seconds by checking her Highrise file. He learns exactly how much progress she's made since joining us, and he makes sure to ask her about the goals she set last time.

Tamara's new handbag line is a hit. She's selling a ton of them online, and she easily repays her Intersect Fund loan. Our role was to understand the obstacles she faced and nudge her toward manageable goals.

If we merely offered microloans and business training, we would be a decent nonprofit. But our ambitions are higher: we want to be the trusted ally of those seeking success in the face of adversity. This means actually knowing our clients — their difficulties, their needs, and where they want to go. 37signals lets us build the tight connections that enable us to make a real impact.

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

How an Oregon lawyer uses Highrise to manage clients and Backpack to GTD

Joshua M. Barrett, an attorney at Black Helterline in Portland, sent us an email detailing how he uses Highrise as a biz dev and marketing tool and Backpack to manage to-dos.

I use Highrise as my business development / marketing tool. Existing clients, potential clients, referral sources, etc. are all contacts in Highrise. I bcc: my email correspondence with these people to Highrise so I can keep track of my discussions with them. I use tasks to schedule follow up items so I maintain consistent contact with the people that matter most to my business development efforts. I also add important dates like first met and a periodic check-in dates which automatically trigger tasks. I use the 37signals Highrise app on my iPhone to manage these relationships on the go.

I use Backpack to manage my to-dos. I use a GTD methodology and use different pages for different contexts. For collaborative projects, I’ll create a separate backpack page and share it with other participants to make sure we are all working together. I write a blog about use of the iPad in the legal profession, tabletlegal.com. I use a separate page to capture post ideas, text snippets, blog to-dos and the like. I use Satchel for the iPhone and iPad to manage my to-do items and pages while on the go.

Powerful but lightweight, cost-effective and easy to use products. Thanks, guys.

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

Illinois church finds "the perfect solution" in Highrise and Backpack

Dave Brazzle of the Immanuel Lutheran Church in Palatine, IL explains how the church and school uses Highrise and Backpack.

I am an Elder (lay leadership) at Immanuel Lutheran Church And School, located here in Palatine IL (a suburb of Chicago). In both our church and PK-8th grade school, we have fully embraced both Highrise and Backpack. To this powerful duo, we have added Formstack (formally Formspring), which is a web-based “Forms” resource. Here’s the story...
 
At our church, we have 13 Elders. Our elders are closely allied with our Pastor in doing ministry and keeping in contact with our members. Each of the Elders are assigned a subset of our membership, to whom they are responsible for keeping in touch, forming relationships and gathering feedback for the leadership. Reaching for such a goal requires an organized approach that fosters continuity, visibility, discipline and self-accountability. In searching for a viable solution, we had many requirements, not the least of which were security, confidentiality, reliability, remote-access, ease-of-use and many functional requirements. We finally stumbled upon the perfect solution; Highrise.

Highrise
We securely exported our church’s ACS database (a commonly used church database), processed and formatted the data using a custom–designed Excel spreadsheet, and then uploaded the resulting contacts into Highrise. Of critical significance, this spreadsheet allowed us to capture and maintain contact information, including birthdays, anniversaries, email addresses, phone numbers etc, from our church database, and automatically include them in the Highrises’ Background Information frame for each contact! We now have the ability to securely and responsibly maintain and (when appropriate) share our contact conversations. Higrise’s permissions features allow us to control access, limit visibility and protect confidentiality, as context requires.

We have begun using Highrise’s “Tasks” feature to contact members on their birthdays, wedding anniversaries, baptismal anniversaries and on the anniversaries of the death of loved ones. Tasks are also used to schedule periodic “maintenance” contacts or to schedule special follow-up contacts as appropriate. It all works perfectly. 

Backpack
But wait, there’s more! We also are very heavy users of 37signals’ Backpack. Here, our problem was that we had dozens of ministries operating within the church and school. All of them had a need to communicate their missions, goals, resource needs, accomplishments, pictures, how to join in their ministry, etc. Yet few (well, OK one) of them were web-savvy enough to do anything about it. Although we have a Director of Technology on staff, his time is always in very heavy demand. The time required for dozens of ministries to each explain what they want to communicate on our church/school website(s) would be overwhelming. All of these ministries knew what they want to say, but they didn’t have a good, efficient and timely way of saying it.

The answer turned out to be Backpack. We now have dozens of pages, each one of them is literally “owned” by a ministry, a board, or a teacher in our school. It takes only a couple of hours to show them how to use Backpack... even for people who initially tell you that they “don’t do computers.” Many of them report that they have found their “page” empowering. Updates to these ministry pages occur daily, without consuming even a minute of our church’s staff. Each of the ministry Backpack pages, are transparently linked-to and accessed from our church’s main website page. People clicking on these links, scarcely even know that they have left our “normal” web site.

Interview with project manager who uses Backpack as part of his "Getting Things Done" system

Design Feaster recently posted an interview with Steve Dale, a project manager, who uses Backpack as part of his practice of David Allen's method "Getting Things Done."

I keep a notebook with me at all times and use a paid 37Signals’ Backpack subscription to manage my personal GTD system (above image). I’ve investigated other apps, but find a combination of pen, paper and Backpack works for me. I occasionally use Satchel, an iPhone app for Backpack, but pen and paper are usually quicker for capturing things when I’m not at a computer.

Read the full interview.

Getting Things Done on webOS with Basecamp and Backpack

David Lich struggled with the lack of full-featured, sync-able task and memo apps on the Palm Pre. He finally settled on a combination of desktop and mobile solutions including Basecamp and Backpack. He details how he puts it all together in "Getting Things Done on webOS with Basecamp and Backpack."

Here he explains how he drags Basecamp to-do items into a "PRIORITY" list:

One of the great features of Basecamp is the ability to drag and drop items between to-do lists and within lists, and also reorder the lists themselves. I have created a to-do list called “PRIORITY” to which I drag items that I want to accomplish today.

And here he details how he uses Backpack reminders:

Backpack has a “Reminders” function that allows the user to establish individual and recurring reminders for specific dates and times. It can then be configured to send out an e-mail, text message or both at the scheduled time. I actually use both. I have an e-mail sent to my Exchange account, and have established a rule in Outlook to automatically move each e-mail with “Backpack” as sender to a separate “reminder” subfolder of my inbox. In addition, I have a text message sent to my Pre which, of course, shows up as a notification. It is truly hard to forget something when it now appears on my desktop in Basecamp, in Outlook in a separate inbox subfolder, and on my Pre as a text message with a notification. I’ll have no one to blame but myself if I somehow manage to ignore all of those reminders.

Read the full piece.

Populi: "Campfire has all but replaced the reply-all email noise that used to plague the office"

Isaac Grauke is CEO at Populi, a company that makes web-based College Management software. Below he describes how his team uses 37signals products.

We build software designed around a lot of the principles expounded in Getting Real and REWORK, principles which are all but absent in the college software market. Between our Sales and Development teams, our day-to-day work revolves around Basecamp, Highrise, and Campfire.

Basecamp
Basecamp does a lot of heavy lifting at Populi. We use it to keep track of development and customer implementation, and to germinate a lot of our web marketing & support documentation.

We group our development activities—whether tracking bugs & fixes, adding new features, improving old ones, and so on—into individual Projects. For instance, we have the “Dev General” project, into which we funnel a lot of the routine, across-the-board stuff (like bugfixes, optimization, etc.). Development projects that require special, focused attention get their own project—our recent Bookstore release was one such item.

Implementation for new customers generally follows a particular pattern, so projects are a natural fit for that. When we sign a new college, we set up a unique implementation project for them, and plug away at it using milestones and to-do’s.

The various writing projects at Populi fit in under Documentation (official stuff like Terms of Service, help documentation, internal company docs) or Website (marketing text for the external site, as well as look & feel code updates). Obviously, these projects are heavy on the Writeboards and To-do’s. Comparing different versions of copy in Writeboard makes it sooo simple to update website text or giant docs like the Terms of Service.

Highrise
Highrise manages our sales leads and correspondence of note with existing customers. It has been a tremendous help to our sales staff; previously they used a half-hearted combination of Salesforce and an internal Populi checkout. Salesforce had a zillion features that didn’t do anybody any good; Populi is built for colleges, not salesmen. Highrise handles everything we need it for with ease — even the guys here who only rarely need to look at it find what they’re after within a few seconds.

Campfire
Campfire is where we discuss a lot of the stuff that’s going on in Basecamp and Highrise. If someone has a question or issue or idea that’s worth the entire company’s feedback, it goes there first. Also, it has replaced internal email for sharing links (work-related and otherwise). For our internal discussions, it’s so much better than what we did before—reply-all emails, individual chats, meetings and mini-meetings—that it’s hardly worth comparing them.

The Populi team hunkers down with REWORK.

Fitting in with Populi
The 37signals apps are a great fit for Populi and how we like to do things. Being in the web-based software business ourselves, that aspect of the apps is just a no-brainer for us. Since we have a rather “informal” company culture, we have no need to chart how robustly we leverage synergies to get maximum ROI. The apps do pretty much what we need them to do. They replaced a lot of software — besides the stopgaps that Highrise replaced, Basecamp did away with an old TRAC system for development and a barfbag of shared folders and documents for our other uses, and Campfire has all but replaced the reply-all email noise that used to plague the office.

One surprising thing about the apps is how easily they let us tweak or adjust our workflows. As I write this, we’re considering some significant changes to how we organize Development projects, and one thing we’ve noticed is that Basecamp will make that process short and virtually painless.

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

“Help me leave the country” Backpack page leads to a carefree honeymoon for web app developer

Adam Fitzgerald is Managing Director at The Frontier Group. Below he tells us how his team uses Highrise and Backpack.

What does your company/business do?
The Frontier Group (based in Perth, Australia) develops web applications and web sites for startups through to big business. A team of 12 (and growing), we develop almost exclusively in Ruby on Rails now and love all things Agile. We run the Ruby On Rails meetup group in Perthand are well integrated into the local Rails community.

Why do you need 37signals products?
At the moment, the two 37signals applications we get the most out of are Highrise and Backpack. We have enough customers to warrant the use of a CRM, but need something with a low barrier to entry (otherwise it’s just another behemoth web application we need to maintain). We run simultaneous projects, so Backpack helps out there with keeping our information in one place.

How do you use the product and why do you like it?
Highrise: With Highrise, it’s all about Deals for us. Every lead goes in as a deal and we monitor the Pending list closely. We can track our Wins vs. Losses, but keeping things moving on Pending Deals is critical. Being able to set Tasks to ensure follow-up means our Deals don’t fall behind schedule. The email dropbox facility means all correspondence and proposals sent can be filed against the Deal, keeping everything central.

Simplicity and ease of use is the reason why we introduced Highrise into our organisation.

Fitzgerald: "It's all about Deals for us."

Backpack: This is critical to keep all project documentation together. We might have four or more people needing access to documents for a project, or just loosely planning some ideas, so it all goes into Backpack.

Another use for Backpack is management meetings. We meet once a week and have a Backpack page where the managers tick off deliverables from the following week and assess the week ahead. It’s not terribly formalised at this level, but it gives us a quick idea of where we’ve been and where we’re headed. Anything that makes a meeting more enjoyable is a plus.

What did you use before and why did you switch?
We were using Google Docs for project file management. That works ok, but is a little bit rudimentary with its interface. For us, it was either develop something in house, or go with Backpack and Backpack worked for us.

Tell us a story about a time when the product(s) helped you out.
Backpack really helped me out when I was heading overseas for my honeymoon. There’s a lot of knowledge that needs to be transferred so I started a “Help me leave the country” page. Initially I used it to just put down all the information that I knew was preventing me from leaving work. I turned that into a Todo list for work items that I wanted completed by the team on my behalf, and a series of notes which would cover off any issues. I don’t remember getting a single phone call the three weeks I was away, so lets chalk part of that up to Backpack :)

Any tips or tricks for other customers?
Despite the simplicity of the 37signals applications, there’s still a lot you can uncover to use them for. We tried introducing Basecamp into our organisation a few years back but it wasn’t quite the right fit at the time. A couple of years later we found a small use for Highrise and Backpack, and it worked for us then. For people unsure of how they will use the applications, just focus on one area that works and then expand from there.

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