- RT @alevit Working Extended Hours? You're Not Alone: http://t.co/Fl1OFWJq via @intuitquickbase #worklifebalance

Customizable SaaS: An oxymoron or the next generation of SaaS?

By Bill Lucchini | Posted on February 15th, 2008

Today I read a great article by Galen Gruman at CIO.com titled The Truth About Software as a Service (SaaS). Galen states that SaaS is a good option but not suited for situations when you need customization. He quotes Lloyd Hohenstein of Schwab Technology: “Don’t expect something unique. If you need everything customized, you
won’t have success with SaaS.”

If you’re a QuickBase user you know that isn’t true. I’d be hard pressed to find two identical QuickBase’s in the hundreds of thousands of applications deployed by our customers. The article also states that "The underlying data model and system architecture of SaaS is also not customizable." With QuickBase this is true only for the core of our system. All of the individual QuickBase applications have completely independent data structures.

The conventional wisdom states that if you want a solution that fits your business needs you must build it yourself or do a complex customization of an on-premise solution. Galen does a great job of describing the majority of the market. For SaaS to continue to thrive and grow in the world’s largest companies it must enable users to make the software work for them. Packaged solutions force you to work the way they work and it’s never exactly right for the way your business works. Intuit and QuickBase are way ahead because QuickBase is made to be molded to your process.

With QuickBase you get the benefits of SaaS – anytime, anywhere access, no systems to maintain and upgrade, great collaboration inside and outside of your firewall… and the ability to make it mold to your process. The best of both worlds.

So, a question to you: what do you use QuickBase for? What’s unique about the way you use it?

About Bill Lucchini

GM of Intuit Partner Platform and QuickBase, father of 3 boys, windsurfer. Follow Bill @WAPL.

Carl Nye

I have deployed Quickbase in my operations unit to improve processes that were mostly manual and untrackable. We have been able to quickly develop and customize over 50 applications that control and measure many different processes within my group. This flexibility has allowed me to add well over 1mm to our bottom line in just a years time. We would not have been able to make this progress without Quickbase. We looked at multiple solutions in the beginning and none of them provided us with the flexibility and pure speed to take the application from idea to implementation as Quickbase does.

I am a big fan of Quickbase and think any business could greatly improve their operationally efficiency by allowing their teams to use Quickbase to solve their needs.

P.S. Basic programming skills are all that we needed to make this happen for us.

[Reply]
Carl Nye

I have deployed Quickbase in my operations unit to improve processes that were mostly manual and untrackable. We have been able to quickly develop and customize over 50 applications that control and measure many different processes within my group. This flexibility has allowed me to add well over 1mm to our bottom line in just a years time. We would not have been able to make this progress without Quickbase. We looked at multiple solutions in the beginning and none of them provided us with the flexibility and pure speed to take the application from idea to implementation as Quickbase does.

I am a big fan of Quickbase and think any business could greatly improve their operationally efficiency by allowing their teams to use Quickbase to solve their needs.

P.S. Basic programming skills are all that we needed to make this happen for us.

[Reply]
http://quickbase.intuit.com/blog/2009/02/11/custom-online-database-or-online-application/ Custom Online Database or Online Application | The QuickBase Team Collaboration Blog

[...] about a year ago I posted about customization and SaaS. Some people have said that one of the primary inhibitors to adoption of Online Applications [...]

blog comments powered by Disqus

Meet Our Writers

Alexandra Levit

Alexandra Levit’s goal is to help people find meaningful jobs - quickly and simply - and to succeed beyond measure once they get there. Follow her @alevit.

Alison Green

Alison Green writes the popular Ask a Manager blog where she dispenses advice on career, job search, and management issues. She's also the co-author of Managing to Change the World: The Nonprofit Leader's Guide to Getting Results and former chief of staff of a successful nonprofit organization, where she oversaw day-to-day staff management, hiring, firing, and employee development.

Eva Rykr

Eva Rykr is an organizational psychology practitioner. Her passion lies in bringing a psychology perspective to the business world, with the mission of creating a high-performance environment. Follow her @EvaRykr.

Anita Bruzzese

Anita Bruzzese is a syndicated columnist for Gannett/USA Today on workplace issues and the author of “45 Things You Do That Drive Your Boss Crazy.” She has been on the Today show, and quoted in publications such as O, The Oprah Magazine, Glamour, Self.com and BusinessWeek.com. Her website, 45things.com, is listed on the Forbes top 100 websites for women.