Our growing company needs a web-based communication solution.

July 9, 2008 8:17 AM

The company I work for is growing by leaps and bounds. We've gone from 3 folks in the same office to 10 folks in 4 offices, the US and Asia. We need a communication solution. Looking for suggestions, experiences and thoughts. More inside.

Now that we're 10 people- 6 of us in New York, one of us in Baltimore, one of us in Asia and all of traveling often- we've gone from being able to say, "Hey Joe..." and have Joe answer from across the room to complex e-mail exchanges, crappy shared drives, shoddy VPN and generally inefficient communications.

The obvious thinking was a Wiki. But with the number of projects we have up in the air and the varying types of media we have moving back and forth, I'm not sure if that's the answer. I've looked in Basecamp and those sorts of things, but not having any experience using them I'm not sure if they're useful.

So I'm looking for any experience in using these kinds of tools, suggestions of services that provide them and thoughts on the process. We're looking to keep it low cost (30-60/mth), but we'll consider all options.

Thanks!

posted by GilloD to Technology (13 answers total)

Response by poster: I should also note that we're not JUST looking for project management- Although that's certainly part of our problem. We also have lots of data (Case sizes, margins, sell sheets, promo pics etc etc.) that needs to be stored and organized as well.
posted by GilloD at 8:18 AM on July 9, 2008

Basecamp is pretty awesome.
posted by Nelsormensch at 8:28 AM on July 9, 2008

Yeah give basecamp a try. It is very basic, but gets the job done for 80% of what you want. It's super cheap too... ~$25/mo will get you a plan that you can try for a few months and see if it fits in with your workflow.
posted by cmicali at 8:31 AM on July 9, 2008

If it's more general info sharing you need and less "project management" look at Backpack by the same folks that created Basecamp.
posted by COD at 8:43 AM on July 9, 2008

I ditto all answers. I'm a heavy user of both products, and they both work excellent for thier respective uses. On the plus side, it's uncomplicated. Anyone can log in and get down to business without teaching.
posted by chrisfromthelc at 8:52 AM on July 9, 2008

Depending on your use of Microsoft Office applications, Sharepoint hosting might be what you are looking for.
posted by paulsc at 8:52 AM on July 9, 2008

PBWiki
posted by mahoganyslide at 9:08 AM on July 9, 2008

Yes, Basecamp. It's great.
posted by lemuria at 9:09 AM on July 9, 2008

Basecamp is great because you can try it free for a month with one project. You should know that it doesn't work for everyone. At two different companies I've worked at we've tried using it 3 or 4 different times, and it was too high-maintenance for us -- I've found you either need someone who likes (or is responsible for) doing project management to 'groom' it daily, or all the end users need to be diligent and organized. Try a Wiki too -- we never really used these for projects but found they were fairly effective documentation. I'd try a bunch of solutions and then see which one most suits the style and culture of your company.

You also might make a list of *exactly* what your infrastructure needs are with short user stories, ie something like:

1. 2 mobile users need remote access to email, calendars, contacts
2. Everyone needs to be able to access files of size Y on Server X from wherever they are.
3. Project Z's tasks need to be split between Alice and Bob who work in different offices.
4. Fred needs access to a simple intranet site that has an accurate index of our companies products.

Do this before figuring out what you need for your infrastructure -- because for this list, Basecamp/Project Management is only going to solve number 3, and *maybe* number 2, depending on the size of the files. I don't think you are likely to find a one-size-fits-all solution for your infrastructure needs. Sample solutions for the above list would be:

1. Exchange or exchange clone server (hosted, for small companies)
2. File server/VPN, or online repository (depending on your comfort level with the confidentiality)
3. Basecamp or other PM software.
4. Custom internal website, possibly online repository.

I'd make this list, order it by pain (we spend on average 1 hour a day doing X, but only 10 minutes a day doing Y, so let's fix X first), and seek out independent solutions for each one. Good infrastructure is not necessarily *cheap*, and I think an extra 30-60 is not going to get you very far unless you already have developers/IT team that can work on some internal projects, but at least you'll know what you're looking at and from there can decide what you must fix now and what can wait for later.
posted by fishfucker at 9:30 AM on July 9, 2008

Sharepoint is quite probably overkill for 10 people. It's a decent product, but for ten people, it's pretty huge.
posted by boo_radley at 9:50 AM on July 9, 2008

@fishfucker

Basecamp can fill all 4 of the pretend requirements. On the surface, it looks simplistic, but there is a ton of functionality that can be unlocked by power users.

In response to your first paragraph, there ALWAYS has to be a champion of "stuff", whether it's the PM, someone who processes all the info going onto the wiki, etc. No way around that.
posted by chrisfromthelc at 10:30 AM on July 9, 2008

Well, I should clarify that my larger point isn't a feature-list of what Basecamp can or cannot do -- because that is not something I'm familiar with -- but rather that it's often useful to come up with a well-defined definition of the problem before looking for a best-case solution.

I'm not against Basecamp by any means; in fact, I think it's a very elegant application. That said, it did not work out for either of my offices -- projects would get set up and then slowly but certainly ignored as we ended up communicating via email and IM and Basecamp had less and less project details. I've seen many times where a company says "Let's buy Salesforce.com accounts and it'll fix all our problems", when realistically, their problem was that their sales staff sucked, or didn't cold-call enough, or didn't have enough BI, or had shitty leads -- not that it wasn't organized. Buying Salesforce solved a problem that didn't exist -- or didn't exist yet. I think it's important to have a succinct problem specification before trying to find a solution. Basecamp is great, but it's become somewhat of a golden hammer when it comes to business infrastructure.
posted by fishfucker at 11:32 AM on July 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

"I've seen many times where a company says "Let's buy Salesforce.com accounts and it'll fix all our problems", when realistically, their problem was that their sales staff sucked, or didn't cold-call enough, or didn't have enough BI, or had shitty leads -- not that it wasn't organized. Buying Salesforce solved a problem that didn't exist -- or didn't exist yet. I think it's important to have a succinct problem specification before trying to find a solution. Basecamp is great, but it's become somewhat of a golden hammer when it comes to business infrastructure."

I completely agree. I WISH I could get the owner of my company to comprehend this. He bought Salesforce because someone he knows used it. Abandoned. He thought we needed a intranet site (I threw something basic together with Drupal to appease his whims). Abandoned after 3 weeks. I'm such a champion for BC because I use it (on personal freelance projects AND work-related projects), and he refuses to use it because he doesn't know anyone else who has used it. For me, it works. If nothing more, it's a good "test" to see if you really need project management software.

On the other hand (and to make this story not ALL sad), I implemented a wiki (we have a LOT of technical information that we wanted to make available to our customers). One person took charge and championed it, and it's become a vital part of our online presence.
posted by chrisfromthelc at 11:46 AM on July 9, 2008 [1 favorite]