Moses Mehraban, Chief Hothead of Chama Inc (yup, that's his title), writes in to tell us how his marketing and communication consulting company uses Basecamp.
What does your company/business do?
Chama Inc. helps businesses with their marketing and communication strategy.
Why do you need Basecamp?
Basecamp rocks as it helps our small team manage independent projects and client work effectively without letting “stuff” fall through the cracks. It’s a true collaborative tool with just the features you need to organize, manage, engage and get things done.
How do you use Basecamp and why do you like it?
Clients
Immediately, once we begin working with a new client, we get them setup on Basecamp and give them the control to communicate, interact, and bring the necessary people on their team on board. Then with the simple, but powerful features we can create messaging, milestones, to do's, etc. We’re easily able to centralize, organize and attach accountability to all our communication, tasks and action plans for the particular project.
Our clients and everyone involved with the projects have an understanding of what’s being done, where things are and what’s coming up next.
Projects
In addition to our client work, our team at Chama uses Basecamp to organize internal or side projects which we apply the same principles of keeping all of our information organized, streamlined and easily available.
Personal
As any small business owner personal life sometimes takes a back seat, so we use Basecamp to keep ourselves organized, sometimes it's something small like a study schedule, or can be something more complex like planning a trip with a group of friends. Either way, Basecamp comes in handy when we need to manage projects on the fly.
Which features do you use most?
The simplest, yet the most effective feature is the messaging system within Basecamp. It’s so simple, yet so powerful in the way it enables everyone to be engaged in the process by exchanging feedback, storing ideas and sharing files.
What did you use before and why did you switch?
It’s sad to say, before Basecamp we used email, paper, filing folders and Microsoft Project Manager and it was a pain. Although the system we had in place helped keep us organize internally; collaborating with our clients and their team remotely was a mess. As soon as we tested Basecamp, it became an integral part of the relationship with our clients. Now our team is better organized and we can deliver a better experience to the client.
Tell us a story about a project or situation where Basecamp helped you out.
Every project is different and we’ve found unique features within Basecamp that have really made a difference based on the challenges and communication style of the company we’re working with.
At Chama we always understood the value of Basecamp to the success of projects. However, it’s been during the recent economic downturn, that we’ve really understood the power of Basecamp in the ability to help smaller teams produce more in less time.
Today, most companies have either laid off staff or placed a hiring freeze, which means, companies require more out from their team than ever before. Where we’ve seen Basecamp add a ton of value with our client work, is the process in which the productivity of the team members raises to a higher level, where smaller teams are now producing more in less time; because, where before time was wasted on minuscule items and the back and forth, now time is invested in output and getting projects done on time.
Tools like Basecamp need to be part of every small business’ process, specially now when teams are pressured to manage time more effectively and produce more with less.
Any tips or tricks for other customers?
With all of our projects, we create a folder inside the messaging system of Basecamp called “Idea Bag”. This folder is used to store all ideas by team members at anytime; we then put our hands in the idea bag once a month and pull out a couple of ideas to implement. The beauty in this is, the team member(s) that came up with the idea, then become the project leader of that particular idea and use Basecamp to manage the project from idea to execution.
Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.
