Basecamp vs. MarcomCentral

Basecamp is a wonderful tool for teams of varying degrees of technical knowledge, teams managing lots of different types of "agifall" and waterfall projects, and teams that are remotely distributed. It's probably less useful for more strictly agile-focused development teams, compared to other more flexible software applications like Jira and Asana.

Incentivized

Pros: I like that we can easily add products and how simple it is for our static products. It's easy to add users, products and cost centers. The approval process for products is easy and intuitive. It's a localized resource that our users can use. Cons: The back end of the product is fairly slow. It takes a long time to add products because of how slow it is at times. The reporting for the portal could be better. I know the Business Intelligence feature was created to solve reporting. Also sometimes we experience difficulty with customizable products. I feel like there's more options to build this out more based on the users needs. Overall: It's a localized place where users can find collateral and promotional items.

Incentivized

• Task management - It is very easy to add, organize and discuss tasks within Basecamp's interface.
• The "Campfire" function is great for communicating when you just have a quick question for someone on the team.
• Notifications - Basecamp lets you decide how often and about what you'd like to be notified. The ability to respond to messages in Basecamp directly via email saves a lot of time.

Incentivized

• The best part of MarcomCentral is its flexibility to solve many unique problems for our customers. It gives us the ability to build solutions that truly allow our customers to operate more efficiently.
• The best admin feature that I use all day, every day, is the Bulk Operations feature. This allows me to manage entire portals through spreadsheets allowing me to create and manage massive amounts of products, users, and images very efficiently.
• The reporting feature is second to none as well. Our most successful customers are paying close attention to the ordering history of their products. This allows them to fight obsolescence and focus on the products that their teams or customers are truly using.

Incentivized

• High Learning Curve. It's true that it can be easy to use, but to use well and effectively takes some time to learn. It's recommended to have an agreed-upon system in your team of what tools to use and when.
• Notification Overload. If people aren't careful they could send a notification to everyone when only a couple people were meant to be prompted. And since emails are sent by default, you could have your mailbox overloaded with unnecessary updates. This is where it takes a bit of training in your team to have an agreed-upon system.
• Lack of organization with Archived Projects. I will often need to reference an archived project to make a new one, but there is only a list of archived projects in alphabetical order, with no way to organize by archive date, or even search.

Incentivized

• The uploading process is a bit clunky
• Overall user experience from an admin side could be refreshed to be more modern and easier to use

Incentivized

When I bring new people onto a project, it's immediately obvious how to use Basecamp. I don't have to worry about teaching them the features or walking them through it, it's just incredibly user-friendly. For this reason, I'll continue to renew my subscription even as new people are brought onto production jobs or the client changes.

It is easy to use, even for clients who have no experience with the platform. It can only get a little cumbersome to ensure that a client can't see certain documents you might want to keep in the Docs & Files folders. And sometimes, getting a client to actually use an unfamiliar platform can be a challenge.

Incentivized

I've never experienced downtime while using Basecamp, or been unable to access it when I needed it. That's not to say they've never had downtime, but I've been lucky enough not to encounter any, and I work odd hours, including late nights when maintenance is often undertaken.

Incentivized

For the many reasons I've given, Basecamp is a very strong program. There are a few features I can imagine that might make it even better, but I don't have a basis for comparison to be able to say that there is definitely a better one out there. I've noticed that Basecamp has evolved a bit from the time I started using it until now, so that makes me think that the producer of this program values it and believes in continuous improvement. If you could use the features offered by Basecamp, I would think you could use it with confidence.

Incentivized

Decide the process before implementation - i.e. when it's due 8/9 does that mean 8am, noon, 5pm, 11:59pm? Check your to-do list frequently Set-up templates - just not with the dates (they can be funky)

Pretty good, but [Basecamp] has its drawbacks. Honestly I find the interface non-intuitive and sometimes have trouble figuring out how to change the status of a task. Perhaps it has something to do with the way it was originally set up by the admin, but I'm not sure. I liked Jira's drag and drop obvious functionality, but the project management side of the software was lacking. Smartsheet has excellent project management functionality, but the task management isn't as good.

Incentivized

We chose this program to test it out and decided to keep it. It helped in many ways and improved the quality of our marketing and digital marketing work essentially. We noticed not only that our ads and content became better, but we also noticed that our know-how improved by adding valuable insights to our news.

Incentivized

• It has saved me time when having to get the same message out to multiple restaurants
• It has helped us make smarter operational decisions because we can all collaborate on an answer in a shorter amount of time (instead of calling a meeting!!!)
• The calendar function allows us to plot out our marketing agenda for the month and add/change it together as needed. The chef will post his recipe, the managers will cost it out, the social media manager will post pictures on it, and ultimately we will get that information out on an info sheet to the staff by printing the page.

Incentivized

• Fully robust tool to help manage our internal assets, ability to customize digital assets or send them to print, a way to share assets across the entire enterprise in simple, easy user interface.
• Marcom's print-on-demand functionality is fantastic. There are so many possibilities that we are just beginning to explore. There are some integration hiccups but mostly on our end, and Marcom has worked to help us through those as best as they can. Also, they have been very open in discussing improvements that we are looking for and keeping us up to date on the progress of those updates within their own development schedule. The depth of this software is extensive and their customer support personnel are always very friendly and helpful.
• Very customizable and a lot of things you can accomplish in Marcom Central. They are always willing to help us work out any need we come up with and make it work in the system.

Incentivized