by Kathleen Lamphier under Industry Trends, QuickBase News

Here’s the second tip for improving team productivity with customizable web-based software. I’ll post another tip every few days. But, if you’d like all the tips now, click here to request them.

Tip #2 – Find your productivity sweet spot

When seeking a project management tool, professionals and business owners have often been caught between two options: off-the-shelf, packaged project management applications or custom solutions built in-house, or with outsourced developers.

Packaged or Custom – Each has its pros and cons.

Packaged applications offer the convenience of out-of-the-box features and rapid deployment. But they impose their rules on users, have limited features and cannot be tailored to meet the unique needs of different companies, or even different teams within the same company.

Custom software will certainly work for your teams. But it’s expensive and it can be time consuming to develop, implement and support. Modifying the software to meet changing functionality and process needs is neither easy nor fast – every application change introduces a new round of development, testing and installation.

There is a way to get the convenience you need with the flexibility you want. Instead of buying packaged software or developing a custom solution, consider customizable “software as a service” (SaaS) project management solutions. SaaS solutions are Web-based applications delivered as a service, hosted by a third-party vendor on a secure server and easily accessed via a browser.

SaaS project management offers a productivity “sweet spot” that gives you:

Cost-efficiency

SaaS solutions require no additional hardware or software and are often priced per user. With the per-user pricing model, you only pay for the number of users you need as you need them. As you add and remove users, your monthly subscription fee adjusts accordingly; with desktop software each license becomes a sunk cost that requires an additional investment. Some SaaS vendors provide an unlimited application model in which you pay per-user and have access to as many applications as you like, rather than paying a user fee for each application.

Flexibility

With customizable SaaS solutions, you can control: what information is gathered and tracked; how information is displayed; who can see what information; what information is communicated when and to whom; and what analyses and calculations are performed on data.

This flexibility allows you to work the way that’s best for you and your team – instead of conforming to processes dictated by the software. And it’s easy to modify the application on your own – without a consultant – as your business evolves. But the key word here is “customizable” – not all SaaS solutions allow this flexibility.

Scalability

SaaS solutions are much friendlier to a company’s growth model than packaged or custom-built solutions. The best SaaS solutions allow you to add or remove users quickly and easily as your needs change. This scalability allows companies to start small and grow their application use over time and is especially helpful for quickly adding users in a new location.

Coming Thursday – tip #3 – Get the hosted application advantage

Have a friend who’s struggling with off-the-shelf or custom project management software?

Send them the link to this tip and introduce them to the SaaS productivity sweet spot.

What about you?
Have a packaged or custom project management application war story?

Reply to this post and share your story. Tell us why you decided to look for an alternate solution and why you selected QuickBase. Tell us about life pre- and post QuickBase. And, you guessed it, be one of the first five people to share your story and receive a Starbucks gift card as a thank you. Your complimentary coffee – or Starbucks treat of any kind, like a salted caramel hot chocolate or awesome congo bar – is just one reply away.

by Kathleen Lamphier under Industry Trends, Uncategorized

I’ve been thinking about my last post and figured if I’m asking you to share your spreadsheet story why don’t I share mine too. I admit it, I was a shuffler. Don’t get me wrong. I like spreadsheets for number crunching — even making lists or schedules when I’m the only person working on a project. But, I’ve not a fan of the shuffling thing.

Prior to joining the QuickBase team I worked for several companies where I have been locked out of team spreadsheets that were posted on a shared drive – because someone else updated their information and left the spreadsheet open. That resulted in the rest of the team – or at least the most frustrated member – hunting that person down to close the spreadsheet so the rest of us could update our respective sections before our team meeting that day. That was definitely frustrating. Other times it was like an update roll-call. I’m done. Who’s going next? Ok, I’m done. Next. And on and on till we each got our updates in.

In the past I’ve also had to spend time consolidating spreadsheets. One time I had a list of leads from a seminar and I needed status updates from various sales reps. Because each sales rep could only see their own information I had to create about 10 versions of the spreadsheet – one per sales rep. Then email one spreadsheet to each rep requesting an update on the list of prospects. Followed by reminder emails and phone calls to get the information back, then consolidate that information back into one spreadsheet for a program report to management.

With QuickBase reporting on leads is so much easier. Our concierge team (think inside sales meets customer service) uses QuickBase to get their leads – each rep sees only their information – and I can easily report from the same system. I just pull a report of leads by their campaign code in order to get just my program. If I ever needed to remind the concierge team to update information I could set up an email notification to remind the whole team – instead of having to send out an individual email to each person.

I can’t tell you how nice it is to have all the information I need all in one system and accessible through an internet browser. I can pull reports from home, from the road. I don’t have to be in the office or using a VPN to do it.

One more confession.
You know when you send out a spreadsheet to a few people for updates and at least one of them messes with the formatting so you can’t just cut and paste information back into your master spreadsheet? Well, sometimes I’m one of those people who reformat a spreadsheet to make it work better for me. At my last job, I drove my manager a little crazy with my spreadsheet tweaking. But that’s all behind me now because with QuickBase I don’t need a spreadsheet, I can just create or edit a report in my team’s QuickBase application to see just the fields I need to see and then use grid edit to update my project information. I love grid edit – it looks just like a spreadsheet. I get to see the information I need the way I need it and I haven’t messed up any formatting for anyone else. And there’s no cutting and pasting, my information is updated along with my co-workers all in one place. No fuss, no muss and no frustrated managers.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Ok, enough about me. Tell me your story.
Remember the first five people to reply to my last post will receive a Starbucks gift card.

by Kathleen Lamphier under Industry Trends, Uncategorized

We wrote a paper that explains 7 ways you can improve team productivity with customizable web-based software.

We’re sharing the first tip below and will post a new tip every few days. If you would like to read the entire paper now click here to request your copy.

Tip #1 – Stop shuffling spreadsheets and start being more productive
There’s an old saying: “When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” For many companies, the spreadsheet is the hammer they apply to any project. And just as a hammer is a poor way to measure dimensions or cut wood, the spreadsheet – though familiar – introduces more project management problems than it solves when you’re working with a team.

When you and your colleagues do the “spreadsheet shuffle,” your team choreography descends into chaos. Without a centralized location for all your project information – a place where individuals can update their pieces of information in real-time- you don’t have one version of the truth. Instead you’ve got spreadsheets and emails traveling around and potentially people working off of inconsistent/old information.

Spreadsheets hurt productivity in several ways. You waste time reconciling multiple document versions. There is a lack of adequate tracking and audit tools which makes it nearly impossible to find errors. And, spreadsheet applications haven’t been designed to encourage and facilitate communication: they have no features for tracking progress, prompting activity or alerting team members to deadlines.

Emailing spreadsheets is a project work-around, not an effective means for managing work. The best alternative is an online project management application that centralizes project information, provides all team members with secure access to the information they need—whenever and wherever they need it—streamlines data gathering, tracking and communication, and makes it easy to stay on the same page and easy to monitor progress.

Coming Monday– tip #2 – Find your productivity sweet spot

Have a friend who’s suffering from the spreadsheet shuffle?
Send them the link to this tip because friends don’t let friends shuffle spreadsheets.

Are you a reformed spreadsheet shuffler?
Share your story by replying to this post.
Tell us what life was like before QuickBase — and of course after.

To thank you for sharing, I’ll send you something near and dear to my heavily caffeinated heart – a Starbucks gift card. Just be one of the first five people to reply with their story and your next coffee’s on me.

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 CustomerSupport: ChongLim Kim under Industry Trends

It’s Friday January 30, 9:25 A.M. as I start this blog.  Ever wondered what a roomful of 150 database uber aficionados get excited about? I’m about to find out while waiting for the delayed start of the 2nd New England Database Day at MIT’s Stata Center. Why am I even here? I had thought QuickBase might be too well kept a secret among database professionals, and had proposed to present a poster session on QuickBase architecture and customer use examples for this event. After encouragement and support from various QuickBase managers, I was further gratified to get personal interest to help from Jim Salem, QuickBase Architect, and Liz McCann, QuickBase Senior Marketing Manager; both provided the content for the poster.

I’ll do a separate blog on our poster; here, I thought I’d touch on some of the database research topics from the day’s speakers that might be of interest to the business technical users of QuickBase. The following are not meant to be summaries, but are just notes I took during the speakers’ presentations.

Prof. Mike Franklin, UC Berkeley and Truviso, Inc. “Continuous Analytics: Supercharging Query Performance with Stream Processing.” Not real-time query processing; stream processing. The research vision: classical “store-first” database is not ideal for business analytics of net-centric data. Want lower latency; but driver today is data volume growth. This is one of the two key-note topics for the conference and seems interesting to me in light of current interest in web user behaviorial analytics.

“Deep Web Search with Morpheus.” Example use case: How much is house at 44 Xxxxx Road, Manchester, NH, worth? Can use willow.com website; fill in form for site to generate information. Another example: I need a 3* hotel for less than $150 in Cambridge, MA. Can use hotels.com, and again ask question through form on web site. But data behind web forms is not visible to search engine. Morpheus — wrapper of user defined functions (that replicate a user filling in the web forms). The next web search frontier…?

Asst. Prof. Daniel Abadi, Yale University. “Data Management in the Cloud: Limitations and Opportunities.” (As an aside, Dan’s talk included an entertaining discourse on a post from The Database Column, a multi-author blog on database technology and innovation: ‘MapReduce – A major step backwards’ by Prof. David DeWitt and Prof. Michael Stonebraker.) If want milk, one can buy a cow, or buy bottled milk. Buying computer to host a database app is like buying a cow. Cloud Computing is like buying bottled milk. Data analysis applications more suited for cloud computing than transaction oriented applications. Food for thought…

David Karger, MIT CSAIL. “Baseless! Why the Best Database is No Database.” Proposal: Low performance database; object relational model; weak/no type checking; semi-structured data; simple queries only; direct manipulation; do not disclose existence of database; learn from user, not make user learn databases. “Exhibit“, a tool built at CSAIL for Database “Backed” Web Sites. Any topic on making databases easy to use naturally would grab my attention…

Alon Halevy, Google. “Structured data on the Web: where we are and where we can go.” Hypothesis: there are new opportunities for data management on the web if we focus on collaboration and lightweight tools. Topic: Deep-Web Crawl… three flavors. 1. Vertical search: a single domain; data integration techniques (e.g. Transformic, Morpheus); goal: close a transaction, or show related items, reviews, etc. 2. Search for anything; goal: drive traffic to relevant sites. 3. Product search; in-between above two. Topic: WebTables — a web-scale collection of tables; data is interesting, but there is much more in the structure itself: attribute correlation; synonym discovery. Topic: Organizing Query Results by Aspects: e.g. Kosmix; using dimensions to organize search results. This is the other key-note talk for the conference; always good to keep up with what Google is up to…

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.