QuickBase Powers Uninterrupted Customer Service
Profile
Founded by Dr. Thomas Grogan in 1985, Ventana Medical Systems is a leading supplier of tissue testing and diagnostic equipment to medical professionals and researchers around the globe.
Ventana lab instruments help doctors get speedy, accurate test results, and help cell specialists identify and profile genes involved in various diseases. Many of America's top cancer centers use Ventana instruments in the fight for their patients' lives.
With success has come rapid growth, and Ventana now has over 500 employees spread across the U.S., Japan, Europe and Australia. Recently Wayne Showalter, one of Ventana's principal software engineers, realized the company needed a new way to manage projects in this critical and ever-changing industry.
Wayne's Challenge
- Manage project schedules, resources and status
- Track and resolve critical issues
- Reduce lost or misplaced details and data
- Communicate between teams and across oceans
"Building a new instrument is a multi-year effort," says Wayne. "This is ultimately what the success of Ventana is built on. It's critical for the whole company that we can keep track of issues and make sure that they are addressed. Knowing what is going on across departments and across the years is of tremendous value."
Long-term product development can be a particular challenge in an industry where innovations never cease. Wayne's colleagues had tried various systems for handling project details and changes, from Excel spreadsheets and Exchange task lists to old-fashioned sticky notes.
"The big lists were difficult to maintain; things tended to get lost," says Wayne. Critical issues needed to be prioritized, tracked and solved. Colleagues on four continents needed easy access to data. "And since our group was growing quickly, the problem was getting worse."
Wayne turned to QuickBase.
The Solution
- Central source of shared information for the entire team
- Easy tracking and update of project changes
- Password-protected access from any location
- Immediate team notification for new data
With QuickBase, "In a few weeks we created project management solutions with everything we wanted," Wayne reports. "Everyone could see the data and interact with it." Web-based and extremely user-friendly, QuickBase allowed the entire team to follow a project's progress, to share new information and updates, and to view priorities for the coming day and the coming year.
The QuickBase customizable data views proved especially helpful. Each group of employees -- managers, designers, engineers -- now has a specific project view with just the relevant information they need. When new information is added, the appropriate team members are alerted at once by automated e-mails.
The full access control of QuickBase also appeals to Wayne. "The combination of formulas and permission controls gives us the data integrity we need. It is very easy to set levels of access."
"QuickBase solved big problems right off the bat," he says. "Projects are more complete. We can keep track of issues and make sure that they are addressed. Using QuickBase has substantially improved the quality of our products."
The Results
- Time and cost savings
- Better teamwork
- Flexible, affordable new problem-solving tool
- Password-protected access worldwide
Smoother product development and less time wasted means savings in labor and production costs. And better communication means better teamwork.
Wayne's colleagues in other sections of Ventana have noticed QuickBase and adopted it to solve a variety of problems. Now QuickBase is used by Ventana employees from Tucson to Tokyo.
Ventana's customer support team has even built its own searchable knowledge base. Replacing a stream of internal technical bulletins, the QuickBase system lists problem scenarios and probable solutions for each of Ventana's instruments. Says Wayne, "It is so much faster for customer support to find what they need in real time while on the phone with clients and field reps."
"Whether we are on the road, or at home or in another country, we now feel like we are still part of the same group and can stay informed. With e-mail notifications, no matter where you are, there are no surprises."
"QuickBase is now woven into the fabric of daily life at Ventana."
