Item: Kintone
Rating: 7
Author: Carmen Miller

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Kintone for book printing and publishing. Exclusively for internal use at this point, it helps us to track a large amount of detailed information and history on thousands of projects and hundreds of clients. Our apps are designed in a fairly linear flow at its center, with each App using Action Buttons and Related Records as bridges into the next App — e.g. Agencies with Authors, Authors with Books, Books with Projects. We also use Apps to track Royalty Information, Vendors, Contacts, New Project Leads, etc. We chose Kintone mainly for its emphasis on data over task management, as our team members work almost entirely autonomously. However, in emphasizing data over the task, a big missing piece for us is the lack of a user-friendly Gantt or timeline functionality—we have another solution for now, but it would be ideal for that to be centralized in Kintone. Other wishlist things that I ask for whenever possible, are the ability to arrange the order of Apps within a Space (simple), and an easy-to-use checklist for each user that could associate tasks directly with any record across all Apps (a bit more complex). Overall, it's been a positive move for us!

Pros and Cons

Customer Service and Training (AMAZING)
Data Management

Gantt or Timeline Feature — user-friendly, and ideally with click-and-drag date changes or it will be clunky
Task Checklist Feature — per user; can directly connect a task to any record in ANY app; managers and team members with permissions can add tasks to other users' lists
Users can create Custom Views (just for them)
Freeform Form Design — can arrange fields freely without being locked to a grid
Checkbox Fields — have the option to show or hide the other unchecked options on the list, ideally with the checkboxes still visible!
Related Records can use more than one reference field — this one is huge if you have records with repeating answers (e.g. two books with the same title—one is paperback, one hardcover. I'd like to specify in related records to associate by title AND by product type)

Return on Investment

Much better data visibility — active and historical
Safety net against mistakes and forgotten information
Increased team accountability in a highly autonomous workflow

Support Rating

I've never had as amazing a Customer Service and Training experience as when working with Kintone. Implementing a new system is a huge project, and their proactive, personable, and motivated team made it a great experience. I've left several glowing reviews about this aspect alone!

Product Configurability

Data management is a huge need for us, and Kintone excels in this. It has cut down on the amount of time we spend entering and re-entering information in various places and has allowed us to automatically reference specific information when and where we want it. I use the Related Records feature in almost every app to provide windows and one-click links into relevant records in other apps quickly and easily. We also use a lot of color-coding with their Conditional Formatting plugin to quickly highlight missing and important data, project stages, etc.

Alternatives Considered

monday.com and Microsoft SharePoint

monday.com — I used this in my previous job and loved it for tracking stages and tasks (and I color-code everything), but at the time it was more clunky on raw data. It may have improved in this since then? Kintone is strong on data and I still color-code everything! SharePoint — very limited experience with this. We were in the beginning stages of implementation and hired a developer to help us customize it for our needs, but it ended up being way too complex for our needs. We move fast and stay agile, so having something I can continue to tweak and update without going through a developer is a big deal. I love that I can do almost everything myself in Kintone, and the only reason I can't do some things is that I haven't spent enough time reading about it in the "how-to" Kintone library yet.

Key Insights

Do you think Kintone delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Kintone's feature set?

Did Kintone live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Kintone go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Kintone again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

I love how we can customize our process to be only as complex as it needs to be. We explored using SharePoint before Kintone (even hired a programmer to build it out) and it was way too hefty of a system for our needs. In Kintone, we are able to customize and build pathways where our team is already walking, rather than force them to walk on a rigid path that doesn't serve them. Speaking of our needs and use, I think Kintone is great for high data management needs like ours and is less strong in task management and timelines. They do have a Process Management feature that helps with accountability and moves a project through its stages, but I'm unfamiliar with a way to manage more granular tasks in a clean way. I do love the Action Buttons feature which allows us to create a record in another app with the click of a button and auto-fill relevant information from the app we are in. Finally, I've never had as positive a customer service and training experience as when working with the Kintone Team—they have been proactive, helpful, personally engaging, and motivated to help us succeed.

Great for our Data Management needs—and we love their customer service team!

Overall Satisfaction with Kintone