A year in I thought I’d share with you some of the web applications that we’ve utilised here at vzaar in our drive for efficiency and openness. We’ve found all of the following to be good value in terms of subscription fees and ultimately the cost of time saved. From my experience as a company gets bigger it becomes harder and harder to control and manage information and data so establishing some basic practices early on can prove invaluable. Not all of these necessarily have to be technology led but in the web 2.0 sphere we’d certainly recommend any of the following:
Backpack
In a start up there is a lot going on and so sharing information quickly and easily is really important. As we became inundated in reports, various log in details, calendars and reminders we turned to Highrise because it gives you the ability to open up the administrative side of your business to your team. With all hands to the pump the ability to share information and therefore save time on circulating the very same stuff becomes vital. As an online application it means we are also freed from the boundaries of our desktop to be able to work on the move and at times when people are away or otherwise busy. It even has a Facebook style status update which means at a glance you can see what your colleagues are working on there and then.
Highrise
Another funky solution from the team at 37signals, Highrise is a shared contact manager that helps you keep track of who you talked to, what was said, and what to do next. As well as being an address book that all of the team can access it really acts as a CRM tool for sharing communications. Every contact in Highrise gets a page and by logging all emails and phone calls any of the vzaar team can view the latest state of play in regard to any customer. As well as freeing up your hard drive one of the biggest benefits has been that as colleagues we can cover each other at times of absence as I can see what anyone customer is saying and can retrieve all historical conversations without having to log into anyone’s PC. If I was being uber critical it would be nice to be able to import contacts in bulk but I believe that is something they are working on.
Unfuddle
With lots of technology changes and new features to be released its crucial to have a ticketing system in place that allows you to clearly label, prioritise and assign work. That’s where for us unfuddle earns it stripes. As a project management tool it is a relatively simple and effective one that means we can track bugs, feature requests, and more. Assigning tickets to colleagues means you can delegate work but still track its progress with ease. You’d think that in a small team that would not be necessary but if I tell you that we currently have 50 odd tickets logged, and of late have closed around 150, you might understand why it has been such an valuable and cost effective tool.
Twitter
Who isn’t on twitter it seems! If you are then you’ll know how it works and how useful it is as a tool for prompt, micro blogging. We’ve taken a twist on that here at vzaar because we are using it as a Customer Support tool. By following us on goingonatvzaar, you’ll receive brief updates on our service. Whether it is a change to the platform, the release of a new feature or warning users of when something is sadly not working, the twitter feed has proved to be a fantastically cheap and effective means of communicating to users en mass. We’ve embedded the feed on our Help pages which has helped reduce the volume of customer support emails and over time we hope to see more of our subscribers follow our tweets on one of the many desktop clients and applications that now support Twitter.