Mavenlink Contributing Guests

Q: Sean Crafts (Mavenlink Co-Founder) - Can you tell us a little about your business?

A: Bart Jarman - Metis Design Group designs and builds mobile websites. More and more people are browsing the internet via their smartphones, and for the most part, most websites are terrible. They load slow and are hard to navigate. Metis designs mobile versions of small business websites so they load fast and are easy to navigate.

Q: Sean - How did you find Mavenlink?

A: Bart - We were looking for something to replace Google Wave, which we had been using to manage IT projects. We spent time with a couple of Google Apps products before we stumbled on Mavenlink for our online project management.

Q: Sean - How has Mavenlink helped your business?

A: Bart - Metis operates primarily with a group of independent programmers. Having the ability to coordinate everybody's efforts in one hosted location has been ideal. Most of our programmers are not located here in our offices, so we needed something fairly robust. The time tracking features have really helped us keep costs in line as well.

Q: Sean - What do your clients and subcontractors say about Mavenlink?

A: Bart - So far the feedback has been very positive. One of our primary programmers signed up for his own account right after we started using it.

Q: Sean - Please explain the Results of using Mavenlink and Google Apps.

A: Bart - We haven't used all of the functionality that Google Apps could offer together with Mavenlink. Mostly some shared Google contact information is all at this point. We expect that will increase over time.

Q: Sean - Anything else you want to tell us?

A: Bart - Having a web-based project management solution has been critical. With so many things going on, it really helps to be able to track projects via a simple browser tab. When something happens that I need to know, there are email notifications that I can customize. The project workspace is clean and easy to understand. We even use a separate project just for milestone announcements to senior staff; they don't care about the nuts and bolts, but like being able to log into the project and see major accomplishments.

Make sure to follow Metis on Twitter or contact Metis on their company website.