by Ellie Ellerman under Customer Stories

QuickBase is looking for customers interested in talking to us about their social computing habits at work and how these activities do or don’t relate to the data you track in QuickBase.  If you’re up for a 30-minute chat, please sign up here.  We’ll randomly select a sample of folks to schedule calls with next week.

by Philip Gross under Customer Stories, QuickBase News

We are pleased to announce that we have begun the process of sucessfully (and easily) transitioning former Coghead customers to QuickBase.

Here are some choice quotes from the press release:

“It took less than eight hours to get our original application up and running on QuickBase and add a second application for CRM. Our Business Consultant also built us an incredible function that integrates QuickBase with Skype, so our processors and reps can contact our clients at the touch of a button from within each application. Overall, it’s been a great experience. We’re really pleased.” – Trent Whatcott, chief marketing officer of CWY Holdings, LLC

“MCF Technologies [A QuickBase Solution Provider] suggested ways we could improve processes we had in Coghead with more efficient ones using QuickBase. We went from three applications to just one,”- Brian Buck of BM Imaging Services.

For all the details, check out our press release.

If you are a former Coghead customer looking for a new home for your applications, we welcome you to give QuickBase a try. And don’t forget to look at the detail of our special offer to Coghead customers.

by Bill Lucchini under Customer Stories, Industry Trends, Partner Corner, Uncategorized

Last night TechCrunch announced that Coghead, a startup that built an online database, is going out of business.  Personally, I’m sorry to hear about it.  I’ve met some of the Coghead team and they are a smart, entreprenuerial team.   This is an important class of applications and there is a lot of opportunity, but in this environment it’s very hard to be a startup dependent on outside funding.  Today, I definitely feel lucky to be a part of Intuit, to be profitable, and to be the #1 player in the online database world.  For QuickBase I certainly feel that everything is a little harder in this economic environment but this news certainly reminds us to be thankful about what is working.

Based on this news we thought about what Coghead users, partners, and employees will do.  Here’s what we can offer:

• For Customers: We recognize that you need to move fast to replace Coghead and if you’re anything like QuickBase users, your apps are critical to your business.  To help ease the transition we’re offering:
  • Six months of free service to get started.  We’d like you to be able to focus on getting your business transitioned and not covering a monthly subscription.
  • Two hours of free consulting with a member of our QuickBase Business Consultant Program who can help rebuild your application in QuickBase
  • Unlimited support
  • Lastly, we will be offering webinars specifically for Coghead customers where we talk about QuickBase and discuss transition issues.
  • You can visit our web page for the offer here.
• For Partners: For those of you who have built businesses around Coghead we’d like to offer participation in either our QuickBase Business Consultant Program or our Intuit Partner Platform. 
  • The QuickBase Consultant Program is perfect for Solution Providers who are good at working with customers to solve their unique problems with QuickBase.  For customers you bring with you we will honor our 20% revenue sharing and we are working to organize a special free QuickBase training class specifically for partners coming from Coghead.  As a QuickBase Business Consultant you’ll also be eligible to participate in our lead share program.  If you are interested in the QuickBase Business Consultant Program please either apply directly to the program, or email darren_levy at intuit.com. 
  • The Intuit Partner Platform (IPP) is designed for Independent Software Vendors that want to build SaaS businesses targeting Intuit’s 4M small businesses.  Like Coghead, IPP uses Adobe Flex for the User Interface so you should find some familiar tools.   If you are interested in the Intuit Partner Platform, apply here, or contact alex_barnett at intuit.com.
• For Employees: Any Coghead employee who is interested can submit a resume to Intuit and we will do our best to get it in front of all the relevant hiring managers either inside or outside of the QuickBase team.  Please send your resumes to sally_russell at intuit.com.

I wish Paul and his team the best and I hope we can help.

by Bill Lucchini under Customer Stories, Industry Trends

Back 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 (SaaS) was that there is no ability to customize them.  Well, as all of you know as users of QuickBase, that doesn’t have to be true.  Just recently I did a post asking to hear stories about how people were using QuickBase.  The results were awesome and one reaction I had was that reading the comments was enough to prove the point that customization and online can go together.  Here are a couple of examples:

• Scott Skibell at National Seminars Group uses QuickBase to organize over 700 training videos.  In his words:
  “ I created a content management system in QuickBase that points to our different servers…  …Marketing and web designers can search the database and click a preview button to watch the different videos. They can then copy the file’s URL and use it in their code for web pages or downloads. This saves me countless hours each day and streamlines our workflow. Without it, we’d probably have to hire someone just to track everything. QuickBase is a godsend.”
• Tamara Littleton is CEO of eModeration Limited and has a global challenge.  She has offices in London, New York, and Los Angeles, as well as 65 staff members working in locations such as Belgium, Germany, Australia, etc.  They use QuickBase to track time cards, manage their clients and new leads, track projects, bring new employees on board, and track staff experience, knowledge and preferences to match them to projects.  You can see more in her excellent comment to my post.  This one company demonstrates the flexibility of QuickBase all on their own.
• Patti Dornacker uses QuickBase to track expense reports for employees.  Employees complete an online form and reimbursement rates are calculated automatically.  They’ve been able to please employees by reducing turnaround time and managers get easy access to reports that give them the info to stay within budget.

As you can see from these examples, because QuickBase is an online database it can serve a broad variety of needs.  People in today’s world have begun to expect things to be exactly how they want them.  Today we have 190k different ways to have our lattes at Starbucks, we can get custom printed M&M’s, or the awesome Flip Mino video camera that you can order with a picture of your choosing on the body (my wife’s has a grasshopper).  It’s time software started working for us and working the way we want it to.  No more “one size fits all” software that solves everything everyone asked for and in the end is such a clutter that it makes no one happy.

by Bill Lucchini under Customer Stories

As I’m approaching my second year running the QuickBase business, and my 15th year at Intuit, the thing that has always kept me motivated is the prospect of doing something that makes a real, meaninful difference for customers.  What’s really interesting about the QuickBase business is that our customers do much cooler things than we do.  We spend a lot of time thinking about how we can make the product and service better, but then, when it gets out in the wild, customers make it dance.  Some of my favorite stories are below:

• Dan Pries at ProPoint Graphics tells us that his  company hasn’t missed a deadline since implementing QuickBase.
• CIO’s like Vivek Kundra of Washington, D.C. are using QuickBase to replace some expensive enterprise applications.  (Best of luck, Vivek!  You have the QuickBase team’s vote!)
• PC Magazine uses QuickBase to track reviews and features.  Also, we just won the Editor’s Choice award.  Thanks!
• A major hospital runs its emergency room via QuickBase on a massive touch panel screen in their command center.
• Google saves $100k to $200k per year and 1,500 to 2,000 man-hours on Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance by using QuickBase.

2008 has been a big year for us.  The general acceptance of online products (SaaS) grew rapidly this past year and, as the leader in the online database space, that energy led to a lot of new customers.  Thank you to all of our users (over 350k) and I hope all of you come to work with the same energy and passion that I have to make a difference.

Lastly, I’m hungry for more.  With so many new customers I’d love to hear about the cool things you’ve been able to do with QuickBase.  Tell us your story!  I invite you to comment on the blog and tell us the following information:

• The name of the organization where you use QuickBase
• Your title
• What you use QuickBase for including the type of application, how it relates to your business, and…
• How QuickBase has made a difference in your business.  Has it helped you save money?  Make money?  Make better decisions?

Add your story (complete with the info above) and we’ll send you a QuickBase care package that includes a QuickBase polo shirt, “QuickBase The Missing Manual” by O’Reilly, and a $10 iTunes gift card.  Oh yeah, please include your shirt size.  :)

Deadline: As of Friday, 1/23/09 I’m going to draw the line on submissions and send out the care packages so make sure you post your story before then!

Thanks, and best wishes for a wonderful 2009!

by Philip Gross under Customer Stories

Well, we’ve been pretty excited over the last few weeks, as we have been working with a big new customer. We have finally gotten permission from his communications team to be allowed to talk about his use of QuickBase.

Santa Claus is now a QuickBase customer.

Listen to interviews with the QuickBase team on what the announcement means to us:

Read the whole story at: http://www.accesspr.com/in/qbs/santabase/index.html

by Philip Gross under Customer Stories, Industry Trends

The App Gap, the Work 2.0 community blog that we sponsor,  has announced the launch of the ‘Appopedia‘. The Appopedia is a directory of Web 2.0 apps.  They have already reviewed tons of web based applications, and I’m sure many more will follow.

There are products in categories from Analytics to Workflow, and are focused specifically on applications that are for the office, rather than the consumer based directories that are out there. When they review apps, they look at how these tools can help individuals and organizations better communicate and collaborate, catalog and share knowledge, engage users and customers, manage projects and further support existing business processes.

Although I’d like to think that QuickBase can solve any business problem, I’m sure many of you are using other tools for other functions of your business. The Appopedia is a resource for you to find the right tool to get your work done. I hope you will find it useful.