If you’ve never heard of the company before, you should head over to www.37signals.com and check them out.

37 Signals designs web applications that are very simple and elegant yet powerfully effective. The one that really has me excited about using at my current business and sharing with our clients is Campfire. Campfire is a web based group chat tool that makes collaborating on an idea very efficient.

We just opened a second office of our small business IT support company, and it’s about 2000 miles away from our first office. The first thing you notice when you do this is that you have to really make an effort to keep communication flowing and keep a sense of being “one team”, which is critical to our service model. Campfire makes this a lot easier to do.

The benefits of using it in our situation are huge:

1. Less time in meetings
2. Fewer meetings
3. Better communication on initiatives that require participation from people in both offices

Because of all of the above, ideas get shared and discussed faster, and therefore get executed on faster. All of this leads to a faster operating rhythm and faster growth!

Check out the 5 minute demo they have on their site - I’m sure almost all of you can find a use for this application somewhere in your organization.