Social Signal regulars will know that we’ve (and by “we”, I especially mean “Alex”) put a lot of effort into finding the perfect solution to our project management needs. We’ve tried web apps like Basecamp and Remember the Milk, desktop apps like Daylite… but nothing has met all of our needs.
Which, frankly, doesn’t surprise us too much. Every organization has its unique demands and idiosyncrasies, and short of a tailor-made solution, no off-the-rack suite is going to drape every bump and curve in the most flattering way.
But we came remarkably close with a combination of project-management upstart Manymoon and Google Apps. (You may remember Manymoon from such blog posts as this one, and such podcast episodes as this one.)
And now the nice people at Google are telling the story of how we did it, as part of their series of customer profiles. (To see Social Signal’s article, selected “Professional services” and “Small business”. Or view it as a Google Doc right here.)
It’s boggling to realize how recently you would have had to pay thousands of dollars for tools like these – mainly because they were only being built for enterprises, if at all. Yet the no-charge edition of Google Apps is more than enough for most organizations… and Manymoon is almost shockingly affordable.
And therein lies an untold story. How big an impact has the arrival of new, no-to-low-cost business applications (and their open-source counterparts) had on the creation and growth of small businesses and non-profit organizations? So many of them run with such tight margins that I’d be surprised if it isn’t substantial, but I haven’t seen any research on the question. Anyone else?
