When I started working at Free Advertising almost 3 months ago I was asked to provide some direction in regards to what technology the team should use, so naturally I recommended (among other things) that we include some kind of SCM (source control management) into our workflow to manage code and assets. Our team may be small, but using SCM to manage new features and other changes is invaluable; the ability to roll back to a previous version alone is priceless. At my previous job, we used SVN and a service called Springloops, but I was ready for a change so I suggested Beanstalk and Git instead. Beanstalk is good at what it does, but it seems like a 1.0 product to me. I think it would really benefit from a Wiki feature at the very least, which when it is kept up-to-date is a great way to manage and organize content. A ticketing system is an absolute must as well, but it isn’t crucial to have this built-in as other excellent task management systems exist (such as Asana or JIRA).
There is a bit of a learning curve when it comes to using Git (or SVN, HG, CVS, etc) but as long as you can remember to update (git pull) before you start and commit (git commit) when you finish you shouldn’t run into many problems. Most software teams use some sort of SCM so it comes naturally to folks like me, but what about the other members of the organization? How could Git or SVN benefit a small (< 20 staff) business?
When implemented properly and used religiously, you don’t have to worry about an automated backup procedure. The system manages the base files, all updates, and gives you the ability to roll back to an older version at any time. The cost of a solution like this is only limited by how much you want to spend on hardware and/or a third party hosted solution like Beanstalk or Springloops. One service in particular, Bitbucket allows you to create an unlimited number of private repositories, which is great considering most services charge a monthly fee to host private repos. I use Bitbucket as my private document storage “cloud” and I love it because it is exactly what I need. It may not be as simple to use as Google Drive or Microsoft Word but when document security and redudancy is important, does it really matter if it takes an extra few seconds to save your document?