We’ve adopted a new goal recently, due in large part to a number of web applications that have given us the opportunity to do so.

We’re working toward becoming a paperless business.

Why Paperless?

The most exciting part about being paperless (aside form the obvious one - using cool web apps) is that it is good for the environment. Instead of using paper which costs trees and resources, we use Basecamp. Instead of taking and storing endless pages of notes from meetings, we use Campfire. And through using Competitious we are able to compare the competition’s work with ours and eliminate file folders and filing cabinets and…phew, isn’t that reason enough?

Basecamp

We’re far from the first ones to pick up on Basecamp (or to praise it!). We use Basecamp to keep track of all Indie projects, from video shoots to web design due dates. But that isn’t nearly the end of it.

We use the integrated chat rooms to record notes during meetings. This is a huge help when it comes to productive/effective meetings. Chat sessions are saved and can be searched - that’s big for us.

Indie keeps a copy of all policies/mission statements in Writeboards. We like to keep an eraser handy to correct these things as we roll, and highly encourage collaboration on them. Writeboards fit us perfectly.

Time tracking is very helpful. To-do lists rock. What else is there to say? Basecamp simplifies what would be an endless amount of emails and scrap paper into a solid, structured website.

Highrise

The newest addition to the 37Signals family, Highrise allows for contact management across multiple users. Really, I consider it a relationship manager more than a contact manager. It can hold so much more than contact info - photos, files, notes about the person that don’t fit into a category - stuff like that.

Most recently, I’ve used Highrise to track a conversation with a client about a design project, manage feedback on our new website redesign (what do you think?) as well as keep track of questions (and then the answers) for an interview. It’s very versatile, being that it is what you make it. The only question is: how long until we need to upgrade to fit more contacts?

My favorite part of Highrise is how cool it feels to offer someone’s contact information using the cool contact info page. Here’s an example: it’s my “card”. Tell me that isn’t cool. And giving info out (only when appropriate, of course) looks very professional when done with this application. I dig it.

I will be very excited to see where 37s takes the Highrise / Basecamp package in the future. It has a lot of potential. I’m excited. It will be worth the wait, I’m sure.

Competitious

We use this website to manage our competition, both in the local and the national sectors. It can be daunting, when dabbling in web design, photography, and videography, to keep track of who else is doing everything you are doing. Competitious helps by allowing us to keep “clippings” of prices and examples of their work. Then, an automatic comparison matrix is created to allow us to match up our features next to theirs. Quite nice.

Below you’ll see an example of our wedding videography competition in a comparison matrix. Hey, maybe this is the sort of thing we could publish at some point (once we dominate them on all points, that is!). You can see it gives you red exclamation points at each category where you are missing something that the competition has. Very useful.

Oh, and Competitious should be seeing some major updates soon. I’m very interested to see where they go with this product. Worth keeping in mind, for sure.

Scary Being Paperless

As Justin said at our last staff meeting:

“A paperless office is an accountant’s nightmare.”

And maybe I’m in no place to argue with that. I guess that’s why he handles Indie’s financial side and I don’t :).

It makes sense that certain things like receipts are much more difficult (notice I didn’t say impossible) to come by digitally. Actually I was having a conversation with my dad the other day about keeping track of bills. He keeps a large pile (as I see it) of bills organized (as he sees it) into Paid and Unpaid. He asked me how I do it. And I realized that every bill I pay is done online. I have digital records, I suppose, but no piles.

So there is still hope for even accountants embracing a paperless office, I think. And that’s not to say that (for now) there aren’t exceptions. We still print contracts and proposals when we must (sigh) and will inevitably have to use some paper resources from time to time. But here’s to hoping we can help the environment as well as our own organization and team communication by using the applications above.

If you have any questions about the above applications, or how you might utilize them in your organization, we would be happy to help. Just drop a comment on this post and we’ll reply with some (hopefully) useful information.

Speaking of which—does anyone else use these applications? Even better, what else do you use to improve your workflow?