Basecamp vs. ResultsBI

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

Results.com would be a fantastic platform for a distributed team that has its data stored in a simple/single/common method and is looking for a single visual platform around which the culture of the company can collaborate, see relevant company metrics (and each other's metrics), and discuss the same. RESULTS.com is likely unnecessary for any team that is physically located together within an office and who can physically meet together. Such a scenario likely already has wall-projected charts and physically posted information. Further, we found RESULTS.com to be a bad choice for a company that has its data in several different locations, requiring the integration of several different APIs all coordinated together. Our somewhat complicated/disparate data simply didn't work well in the system to the point where people eventually were conditioned to NOT believe the numbers shown in RESULTS.com.

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

• It has a very nice graphical/visual display of metrics/KPIs that are fed into it.
• It has a fantastic meetings agenda and communication module that helped better connect our geographically distributed offices.
• It solved the problem we had of using several different platforms for each need - providing a central place for results-orientated information sharing and discussion.

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

• Like all BI software, the pretty graphics and charts and information are only as accurate as what is put into the system. It does not have parameters that will flag suspect data, which became a problem as our data sources increased and the results.com integration required more and more results.com-side development.
• The promise of having the corporate mission/vision/values/etc. all connected to individual priorities and associated KPIs never came to pass. Being early adopters, we purchased partly on the promises of salespeople. As time marched on, support and development dropped off in favor of increasing their sales department.
• We believe, through our experience with results.com, that the company was built to sell quickly. That is, we believe the owner/s blasted through their funding in the first year to onboard as many users as possible so they could increase value for a quick sale. Then we believe that when the money was mostly spent, and there was no sale, the company had to become a normal, profitable, long-term business which led to expense cutting, a RIF of developers and customer support, and the resulting slowdown/stoppage/inability to develop and support the product. Our feeling in the last months on the platform was one where it seemed the employees/owners were unhappy and disgruntled to have to actually run it as a business and deal with customers. (This is our guess and belief based on what we saw over time and without any knowledge whatsoever on what was actually happening over there.)

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

When it worked, it worked nicely. Unfortunately, it didn't work for us all the time - and less so as the months went on. So, although relatively "easy to use," it stopped providing value due to its data integration problems. Thus, when the data was incorrect, people stopped using it.

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

This is a solid 5 because the first year we had fantastic customer support. We had a comprehensive training, a (seemingly) dedicated support staffer, a fair amount of development help to integrate things, and consultations with people associated with RESULTS.com who have made a name for themselves in this general method of business operations. But, after the first year that mostly dried up. It was a 10 the first year, and a 1 the next years - averaging to a 5.

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 have examined a variety of similar products both before, during, and after our time with results.com. We are currently using Sisense which is an entirely higher level than results.com in terms of B.I. - not only in the drill-down type of data access and reporting but certainly in its ability to handle multiple data sources effectively.

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

• We did not utilize a BI dashboard nor a standardized meeting agenda system before results.com so in that respect, it helped us establish a results/performance-orientated culture which was badly needed.
• Unfortunately, beyond that first year, results.com didn't keep up with our struggles with data imports. That, combined with the inability for us to see direct ROI $ increases, led us to eventually leave the platform. Unfortunately, they locked us into a longer term (even without providing promised services) and so we technically were on the system (but not using it) for 6+ months past the date where we'd all agreed it was not useful for anyone anymore.

Incentivized