<p>In September 2010, Josh Leavitt's company, JLeavitt Designs in Portland, was starting to take off. The two-year-old online marketing firm had four full-time remote employees and had just landed its first big client, an international automotive company that wanted five websites built right away. Leavitt's team was already busy on other projects, so he brought on four freelancers to do the majority of the work.</p><p>But he had a problem. Leavitt was leaving on an extended trip to Europe, where he wasn't certain he would have consistent internet access, and he was worried about how he would maintain oversight of the projects. "That was the first time I realized how important Basecamp was to my business," Leavitt says.</p><p>Basecamp is a web-based project management and collaboration tool, and one of a host of social collaboration software products that Leavitt uses to keep his team connected. They use it to assign tasks, update status, manage shared documents, and problem-solve. "Basecamp is the backbone of the business," he says.</p><p>It also was the solution to his management problem. Before leaving town, Leavitt created profiles for each of the five new projects, including key goals with tasks under each goal that were assigned to each team member, with defined outcomes and specific deadlines. Then he set a daily progress update alert through Basecamp that came to his phone each morning while he was traveling.</p><p><a href="http://www.workforce.com/articles/9127-big-collaboration-tools-for-little-companies">Keep reading...</a></p>