Our customers are a big part of a growing class of knowledge workers that are transforming how software is used in the enterprise. Our recent survey revealed that nearly one in five information workers has built or customized a Web app or software for work purposes without support from IT. The results of these tech-savvy innovators? Improved outcomes for their customers, increased productivity and better collaboration among coworkers. Despite this, 35 percent of businesses still do not enable and encourage employees to create solutions independently. We want to let our customers know: we’re right by your side in the quest to build solutions that are right for you and your customers and not just IT.

They fueled a movement,

Last year, our customers impacted the business technology landscape and their own organizations in a big way. QuickBase heroes built 257,819 new apps and welcomed 293,625 new users to the QuickBase community. That’s close to 300,000 custom-built ways to improve productivity! And we’re delighted to be ringing in the new year with almost 300,000 more QuickBase users. We’ll do our best to give these budding heroes the tools and know-how to become change leaders at their organizations. If you’re a user and want the ability to create applications of your own, just ask your account administrator for “create permissions.”

Impacted every facet of the enterprise,

In 2011 our heroes, or application creators, fearlessly crushed inefficiency wherever it lurked, streamlining workflow processes across industries such as healthcare, construction, banking, retail, insurance, telecommunications, education, and hospitality. They made many functional groups dramatically more efficient by creating applications for operations, sales, customer support, human resources, and billing, to name a few.

And empowered those around them.

By inviting 293,625 new users and creators to their applications, our heroes empowered their coworkers to make a difference by either introducing them to our platform or giving them the ability to create their own solutions. If you’re a QuickBase customer (or just a thoughtful person), give your friends or colleagues the opportunity to make positive impacts at their organizations by sending them a free trial using our referral tool.

Needless to say, they impressed their teams – and us – with their ingenuity and initiative. Check out some of their co-workers’ accolades from the QuickBase Hero Search Contest here.

So, here’s to you, our endlessly admirable customers! We thank you for using QuickBase, giving us your feedback, and demonstrating the power of custom apps in the enterprise. Here’s to an even more successful 2012! Happy QuickBasing!

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The Winner

Without further ado, let’s announce the winner of the QuickBase Hero Search! Drum roll…Brian Boals of Stream, LLC is our QuickBase Hero! According to their website, “The Stream brings a new and innovative approach to the vehicle repossession and remarketing industry by liquidating vehicle assets directly from repossession lots.” Brian was chosen as the winner for the contest because his entry best fit our submission criteria. The QuickBase solution, which he built and implemented in a matter of weeks, plays a key role in helping his business deliver on its value proposition and has enabled massive growth. Instead of us rambling on, let’s let our Hero speak for himself. Here is his submission:

“Our company began just over a year ago. We sell vehicles through online wholesale auto auctions. As we started out, we tried to retrofit brick and mortar auction software to fit a much more dynamic web environment. It quickly failed. After shopping custom app development, we knew that our budget just couldn’t afford it.

Somewhere along the way I discovered QuickBase and prototyped an application that was custom fit to our process and client needs. Within, 45 days from my first login, we launched our custom vehicle inventory management application to our internal staff and also rolled it out to a number of our clients.

Today we have over a dozen of our largest customers using the application and the list grows by the week. We have been able to meet our clients’ needs far greater than ever before with our legacy client application. The development of our application in QuickBase has allowed us to respond quickly to our customers and attract even greater business opportunities.

I made my boss a happy man by saving him six figures in custom application development costs and have allowed our company to drive business forward using cloud technology. It has felt great to leverage such innovative software as QuickBase to make such a great impact on this young and growing enterprise. Thanks, QuickBase!”

While our winner best fit the submission criteria, we were blown away by the appreciation everyone voiced for the QuickBase Heroes in their organizations. And rightfully so! With their custom QuickBase solutions at their sides, these heroes drove meaningful business results including:

Building and implementing solutions quickly:

“I approached Charles as I knew he had the skills and experience to bring my vision to reality. Within three days we had a ready-to-roll customized solution in place! Not only did the custom interface do what we needed; but visually it was engaging and logical to the users. His expertise and experience allowed me to provide my client the best product in a limited time within a tight budget.”

Enabling bottom-line growth:

“I’ve saved the company hundreds of hours spent initiating & following up on projects and freed up server space because of reduced e-mail messages and attachments. Less printed paper is generated and fewer calls are placed. The savings are all across the board!”

Increasing efficiency:

“The problem was that our sales team needed approval from management to offer special pricing via e-mail. Management’s inbox was so full and when they actually got around to responding, they often had incomplete information about the request. The solution was to use QuickBase. Sales now inputs special pricing requests into QuickBase and management gets notifications containing the necessary information to make the call. The outcome was a drop in management response time from one week to within 24 hours; special pricing requests from sales tripled because they were now getting timely responses; e-mail numbers dropped like superman in a kryptonite suit, and better decisions were made!”

Winning new business:

“The request for proposal included dozens of spreadsheets full of data. As part of our bid for this new business we wanted to demonstrate our ability to not only perform the required work, but to also better manage the client’s information. To do so, I constructed a QuickBase application and loaded it with most of the data provided in the request for proposal. In our proposal, we were able to offer a full-featured web-enabled Information Management System at no additional cost that undoubtedly helped us to win this opportunity!

Better serving customers:

“Prior to implementing QuickBase, clients would mail in their 10 page documents and then we would then create a file to attach the correct documents to the correct client. Account managers were then assigned a paper file for them to work, giving them the ability to address 10 to 15 clients per day. With our process being paper we had no way to pull reports or analyze our portfolio. After QuickBase was implemented, our data is now transferred directly from the website to QuickBase and our clients can fax or email in the documents linking them directly to QuickBase making us paperless. QuickBase now gives us the opportunity to work with over 120 clients per day and has greatly increased out client base!”

All of the submissions described wonderful success but there were some extraordinary cases where our Heroes were able to use their QuickBase solutions to accomplish astounding feats. Armed with insight provided by QuickBase, one hero was able to make the case for saving a team from being downsized: “The analysis and quick, accessible reporting of QuickBase allowed me to make the case for the productivity of the team, dispute analysis developed by the agency’s performance management team, and ultimately save the unit from being cut.” Another extraordinary story is about one woman who, after deploying her QuickBase solution, not only retained her position after her company was acquired, but she was named Employee of the Year and given a promotion!

Each of the people nominated are Heroes to us! If you’d like to share your story, please post it below or on our Facebook wall. Interested in becoming a hero? Sign up for a free trial of QuickBase or ask your Account Administrator to grant you app creation permissions so you can create your own web based software solutions.

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As part of our We Care and Give Back corporate value, Intuit recently launched a Do One Thing initiative to encourage all employees to do their part to make the world a better place. In support of the United Nations World Day for Cultural Diversity, Intuit is extending its Do One Thing initiative to incorporate the UN’s campaign on May 21st. Following Intuit’s lead, many organizations are hosting special events or doing other activities for what we’re calling the Do One Thing for Diversity & Inclusion campaign. The cross-organizational goal is to get one million people around the world involved.

“We jumped at the chance to showcase Intuit’s commitment to diversity and our skill set in creating a diverse and inclusive environment to the world alongside leading companies in the diversity space like Intel, Merck, Royal Bank of Canada, Yahoo!, Genentech, VSP, Symantec, and Cisco,” said Terilyn Monroe, global diversity and engagement leader at Intuit.

To make this coordination across companies successful, the Intuit employee engagement team teamed up with QuickBase to create an application where individuals from participating companies could publicly sign up for activities to support World Day for Cultural Diversity and in doing so, inspire others. There were other key solution requirements laid out by the Intuit team. The QuickBase needed to:

• Capture and intelligently display input from multiple organizations
• Track progress towards the one-million-participant goal
• Reflect Do One Thing and UN World Day for Cultural Diversity branding
• Be interactive and engaging to participants

In a matter of a few emails and three phone calls, Kirk Trachy, a QuickBase Sales Engineer, was able to create a fully-branded landing page for the initiative (pictured here) that serves as a sign-up form, crowdsourced idea generator, reporting tool, and social graph. To see the application and what employees have pledged to do visit the landing page.

“A lot of people think it takes months and tons of meetings to create an app like this,” said Kirk Trachy of the Do One Thing for Cultural Diversity & Inclusion application. “With QuickBase, creating an app to fulfill multiple requirements is immediately possible!”

Have you created an application in a matter of days to solve a pressing need? We’d love to hear about it! Let us know in the comments below or on our Facebook page. Need to get a solution up, like, yesterday? Check out a 30-day-free trial of QuickBase. One of our coaches will help you get that first app and running.

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We hear a lot of stories about customers tackling business challenges of epic proportions using QuickBase. Its high time we celebrate their accomplishments! That’s why we’re launching the QuickBase Hero Search to find the individual who best personifies the QuickBase Hero. And we’re throwing in a 16G iPad2 for the winner and QuickBase Hero capes for the first 80 entrants.

Who Are QuickBase Heroes?

QuickBase Heroes are the folks who swoop in and create solutions for all kinds of problems. Like magic they translate complex business processes into applications, get a solution up in minutes to solve a pressing need, or create apps to organize the most chaotic projects. Put simply, QuickBase Heroes build the apps that run your businesses, improve your team productivity, and drive better business outcomes.

There are many kinds of Heroes out there and they hail from teams across your organization. Some of the most common places to find Heroes are Sales, HR, Marketing, IT and your management.  Since QuickBase enables most administrators to grant app creation rights to users, anyone can build a solution if they’re given the permissions. And the solutions people can build are endless. From CRM, to human resources, to IT management, where there’s a QuickBase Hero, there’s an app for that. If you haven’t had the opportunity to prove yourself has a Hero, ask your admin for app creation rights and fasten on your cape!

This is your forum to celebrate the QuickBase Heroes at your organization. Does this description sound like you? Feel free to nominate yourself! Either way, you’re in the running to win an iPad2!

Your submission should include the following in under 300 words:

• The Problem(s) – What challenge did you or your team have? (i.e. Crazy deadlines, inefficient workflow, scattered teams, time-consuming process etc).
• The QuickBase Solution(s) – How did the QuickBase Hero use QuickBase to help you solve this problem? Discuss in as much detail as you’re comfortable, what solution was created to address the problem identified above.
• The Outcomes – What happened as a result of the QuickBase Hero creating a solution for your problem? (i.e. Saved time or money, delivered outstanding business results, did the impossible, etc).

Contest Rules:

• To be eligible, you must  submit before May 20, 2011 at 11:59 p.m. ET
• First 80 entrants will receive a custom QuickBase Hero cape
• The winner will be selected by an Intuit panel based on the QuickBase Hero definition above.

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We recently told you about results from our annual customer survey, and one of the questions we asked on that survey was about the types of business processes that you enable with QuickBase. We learned that on average our customers use us for over 4 different types of applications! Here’s a visual summary of some of the most popular uses:

What’s really fascinating to us is the infinite number of unique ways people use QuickBase underneath  these high-level headings. For example:

• Development of a magazine ad by an advertising agency
• IT project management at an airline
• Workflow of a document approval process
• Servicing a customer claim request

The list could go on and on! For detailed examples, check out the Customer Stories section of the blog, or on our Customers page on the QuickBase website.

You probably noticed that not only are there tons of different applications, but we’ve also got companies using QuickBase to solve these problems across an incredibly wide variety of industries – from healthcare to high-tech, from construction to consulting, to retail, financial services, non-profit, and beyond. We see that as the beauty of QuickBase: no matter what your process, you can customize an application to suit your specific needs. If you’re not already a customer, check out our 30-day free trial offer! We’re sure you’ll be able to create an app to solve your challenge.

We’d love to hear about the unique ways that you use QuickBase to be more productive in your business. Drop a comment below!

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Interested in learning how other companies have used QuickBase to make their important business processes more efficient? Thinking about using QuickBase for CRM and looking for examples of success? Wondering how much time and money a company can actually save using QuickBase?

Check out our new customer story about Earthbound Farm. Here are the headlines about the challenge the company faced and the solution they chose:

The Challenge:

• Customer database required approximately 160 staff hours each year to update.
• Weekly sales report generation and distribution took an estimated four staff hours each week.
• Excel spreadsheets didn’t provide insight into sales activity.

The Solution:

• QuickBase CRM greatly reduces time spent completing database management tasks.
• Critical sales and customer data are easily visible in one application.
• CRM and ERP systems are integrated for more business insight into productivity and workflows.

The Results:

To read about the results and for more details on the story, view the full case study on our Customers page. Let us know what you think in the Comments below!

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Here are a few of the things we learned:

• You feel strongly that QuickBase helps you be more efficient and productive. When asked to rank all the benefits QuickBase provides, this one came out as the clear winner. We are so happy to hear it! Tell us more about how in the comments section below.
• Your reviews are mixed on Ease of Use. For those of you who are willing to recommend QuickBase, your most common reason for doing so is the ease of use of the product. For those who aren’t recommenders, it’s because you don’t feel QuickBase is easy to use. Scratching your head? Not to worry – we have plans in the works to make QuickBase easier to use for all.
• You are happier with us if you have used Support. We love that you are getting the help that you need, and coming out smiling.
• Your confidence in our reliability is growing. You rely on us for critical business processes. To ensure we are always available, we’ve invested a lot in high availability infrastructure and processes, and we’re glad that it’s positively impacting your confidence in us.
• You are excited about new ways to use QuickBase. Over 200 of you wrote in suggestions for new product features, and we heard you loud and clear! Our product management team is pouring over those suggestions and working on the best ways to make the most requested ones come to life.
• You want to stay engaged with us. Over 900 of you agreed that we could follow up with you about your response to the survey. Wow! The generosity with your time and feedback is fantastic. We have several follow-up initiatives planned, so don’t be surprised if you hear from us.

We look forward to keeping you updated on the decisions and actions you have inspired. In the meantime, please send us additional feedback anytime!

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The responses came from a diverse set of QuickBase users but there were three common themes. Based on this word cloud synthesizing all the entries, it’s easy to see that QuickBase’s ease-of-use, flexibility and data management features are some of the most beloved.

Ease of Use

“It’s elegant, adaptable, easy to use, and easily adopted by novice users.”

The attribute that showed up in almost every response was “ease:” easy to use, easy to build apps, easy to deploy. QuickBase was designed so that the average businessperson can create his/her own solution and easily share it across teams and organizations. Succeeding at work is a challenge, the tools you use to achieve your goals shouldn’t be. While we were delighted to see that some of our customers are loving QuickBase’s ease-of-use, we’re constantly looking to improve this. So, keep giving us feedback and stay tuned!

Flexibility

“It allows the end user to determine the future, no other tool is as flexible.”

Considering the range of industries and diversity of business process challenges professionals face, QuickBase must be flexible in order to help users quickly build solutions for their unique problems. Our users have the ability to create applications from scratch that can then be deployed across a team, department or organization while integrating with existing systems.

Data Management Superpowers

“It allows me to quickly organize large sets of data making me look like the hero!”

Who said being able to wield data wasn’t a superpower? To our delight, we received a number of entries from users who have been dubbed “heroes” and “rockstars” within their orgs because of their seemingly effortless management of cumbersome data. As an online database, making data management easier is one of QuickBase’s core strengths. And QuickBase users love their data: there are currently 1.3 million reports with 5.3 million fields and 272 million records in active QuickBase apps. To infinity and beyond!

Some of Our Favorite Entries

• “It can turn that sparkle in my eye to a usable app in under 5 minutes.”
• “It’s made me a rockstar at my office by revolutionizing a lot of processes around here!”
• “It adds order and structure to my life. I couldn’t be successful in my job without it.”
• “It’s flexible and easy to develop. Exact opposite of big box apps.”
• “It’s the hands down fastest and best ROI for business process collaboration.”
• “Because the ratio of functionalities & efficiency to cost surpasses all other systems.”
• “Every time I think ‘I wish I could…,’ QuickBase CAN!”
• “It revolutionized how teams in my company work, helping us ditch project mgt in Excel!”
• “It reduced a complex manual tracking & notifying process to a few easy key strokes. Yeah!!”
• “It helped me grow from a nobody in the company to a global unifier of accessible data.”

The Funny-But-True Entries

• “Who likes writing SQL queries?”
• “We love QuickBase unconditionally. ”
• “It’s so easy a Troglodyte can work it. Reporting is a snap!”
• “Anything else would be uncivilized.”
• “I have the flexibility to do what I want w/ constant support. It’s my fantasy relationship.”
• “It makes life easier and makes me look good (at work). “
• “It makes data interpretation easy and my boss happy!”
• “It lets my data talk, argue, fight and make up all in one place!”
• “I love Quickbase because it makes my life easer!!”

To see the full list of Tweeted entries, simply search Twitter for #ILoveQuickBase.

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When you stop and think about it, QuickBase is a lot like a significant other. You interact regularly; you depend on it to remember important information; it helps you solve your problems; and it’s there for you wherever you go. What kind people would we be if we didn’t tell QuickBase how much we love it on Valentine’s Day?

Although shouting your love for QuickBase from the rooftops should be reward enough, we’ve worked a little something for you into the deal. When you tell us why you love QuickBase, you’re automatically in the running for a 32GB iPad!

Submitting is a piece of cake:

• To be eligible, fill out this short form no later than midnight Sunday, 2.20.11
• The winner will be selected by a random drawing
• See contest rules below before submitting
• Don’t forget to tweet why you love QuickBase!

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The Challenge

Together with Rich Johnston, Sr. Web Developer, Rob observed that the site marketing team responsible for Kodak Gallery’s merchandising Website had no process or visibility into managing the approval, prioritizing and scheduling of projects.  As a result, time for approvals and deployments were slow, communication was difficult, and the tasks were driving the strategy for the site rather than the site strategy driving the tasks.

The Site Marketing Team managed the deployment of other marketing teams’ offers and updates to the site, managed multivariate testing on the site to improve conversions, and required a process for prioritizing and scheduling these various updates, offers and tests.  With many constituents in Marketing and Product Marketing both in the US and Europe relying on the team to deploy offers and updates, and complicated by the move to a new platform, the team spent an inordinate amount of time prioritizing, approving and controlling the flow of projects.

Rob and Rich knew exactly what was required to increase productivity of the team, ensure offers were sound, and deliver a faster time to market.  They needed a tight operational process that would provide visibility into requests and projects, and control over the scheduling and deployment.  Rob and Rich evaluated the problem and developed an operational process that uniquely met the needs for the Kodak Gallery marketing organizations.  The key to their success would be getting the process automated and broadly adopted.

The Solution

They evaluated three packaged products already in use internally but quickly realized that no single product could meet their requirements especially around automation, alerts and notifications, and customizable forms.  They needed a way to create a custom solution to implement their process; not fit their process to work with a packaged product.  In addition, it needed to be cost effective, fast to deploy, and require no IT development or maintenance.

Rob and Rich turned to QuickBase and developed an application first for project reviews, then expanded it to include an approval process linked to scheduling, and finally added a document library for multivariate tests.  Since then, they built another application for event management and survey data, further leveraging QuickBase at no additional cost.

The Results

Rob and Rich’s best in class operational process, powered by their QuickBase application, has yielded tremendous results for the Kodak Gallery merchandising site.  Offers are approved 80% faster with a one day turnaround.  The Site Marketing team is 25-30% more efficient because all teams have visibility into the planning calendar and have assets in place when required.  Together, these improvements put the Site Marketing team on track to deliver 20% faster time to market.  And as leaders in their organization, Rob and Rich know that the offers deployed are sound, and that they are making clear choices and decisions informed by the strategy.

What will they tackle next?  With the ability to identify opportunities to improve results, and a platform like QuickBase that cost effectively scales to meet a wide variety of requirements, Rob and Rich plan to find new ways QuickBase can be applied at Kodak Gallery to keep them delivering a best in class experience for their customers.

In this video, Rich goes into greater detail on the challenge and solution Kodak built with QuickBase:

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