Introducing QuickBase at BusinessWeek

When Isaac started at BusinessWeek as the VP of Technology in July of 2007, he first wanted to get a sense for how his teams were working. He asked what systems were being used to manage day to day work – specifically what information was being tracked and how projects were being prioritized. In response, Isaac received a myriad of answers, of which included several spreadsheets.

Some were complex, others were merely wish lists and few had good processes embedded. Immediately, Isaac knew the first thing he needed to do in order to move his team towards success was stop their spreadsheet dependence and really centralize where important data was being managed. In came QuickBase.

“I knew from past experience that QuickBase was a solution that both business users and more technical users in IT could really benefit from.”

Moving quickly away from the mess of spreadsheets, Isaac’s team started out with one of the project management templates. All projects and deliverables were entered into this application and managed from there. Next, he quickly put a process in place for managers to add weekly updates. All information quickly became centralized and easier to access.

As a rule of thumb, if someone is looking for a specialized workflow solution, Isaac suggests using QuickBase first. Whether it’s hiring management, budget tracking, meeting management, portfolio management – QuickBase database applications were used at BusinessWeek to solve a variety of business needs.

When I asked Isaac what he loved best about QuickBase two words came to mind for him: Transparency and Simplicity.

“With QuickBase you can take data or workflows buried on someone’s hard drive or in a set of emails and make it more visible. It all boils down to identifying ways to improve team productivity. Reducing the number of steps and streamlining process is all possible – a project status meeting that once took 60 minutes to review all projects – now takes half the time and only focuses on the projects that are highlighted in yellow or red on the QuickBase dashboard.”

As Isaac transitions to McGraw Hill, he’s planning on taking QuickBase with him once again.
Are you ‘One with QuickBase’ like Isaac? Tell us how you have taken QuickBase with you throughout your career.

Isaac writes a blog, Social, Agile and Transformation and you can follow him on Twitter @nyike.