Item: Quickbase
Rating: 10
Author: Neil Shepard

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our group uses Quick Base for project management and tracking. We have been using Excel and that has been a miserable experience. So far Quick Base has been a HUGE improvement. The company has implemented an app to allow them to get a better understanding of where we are excelling and where we are failing. This gives them a better picture in the places doing well, places where additional resources are needed, and places that we need to drop the activity as unprofitable. It is in early stages, but so far is great.

Pros and Cons

IT Support is the BEST!!!!!!!!!! They respond within 1 hour usually, and will call you if need be. Name another company that is that fast?
Great group of people. They are knowledgeable and willing to help/
It may be a low-code platform, but with the help of the company and the community board you can do incredible things. Everyone involved is extremely helpful and knowledgeable.

It is a tool that is very flexible, but don't expect it to be all things to all people.
For a modern software tool, there are lots of imposed limits in the program. There are limits imposed on form rules, limits on formulas, and a not fully polished UX for some tasks. Don't go into this thinking that the path is straight from start to finish. Sometimes the solution takes some testing and patience to solve and tends to not be obvious.
There are times I would like to have a the simple ease of searching a column like in Excel, but that is not possible without scripting in some Javascript link Handsontable.

Ease of Building Custom Applications

We are in early stages of deployment, but so far things are good. So far our group has a tool that gives our team members all the information that is necessary, in one place, to perform our work. May only save 10 minutes per project a day, but for use that's almost an 8 or 9 resource hours per day. That alone is a great savings. Also, we are creating a tool our clients can access and trust more than their own tools they use.

Alternatives Considered

Much easier to design and create the tool you need. We have tried Access, SharePoint, Excel, and Oracle but these tools are inefficient or lacking extremely. We looked into m-Power and Trello and they pretty good, but either they lacked in ease of use or they were not a good fit for the project management needs of our particular type of work.

Citizen Developers Using Quickbase

I will say that it is more difficult to build a quality app than a standard database. But the University tools are extremely helpful, the community board is full of knowledgeable people, and the IT group is FAST. I started building the app as if it was a database, but in reality I must have made and destroyed apps that weren't right. Be open to the concept that A to Z is not a straight path, I did and it's a great lesson to learn fast.

Goals with Quickbase

Improving our ability to drive insights from our data
Improving collaboration across one or more teams
Solving a specific business challenge
Building and deploying an application (or multiple applications) that meets our exact needs

We were looking for a tool to replace an ailing Excel project tracking tool the is really acting like a database. So far, Quick Base is meeting the needs of a tool that is a cross between a database and a spreadsheet. It has allowed us to provide fast insight to our clients in the state of projects, unlike the tool, Salesforce, they currently use. That clarity alone is worth it.

Ease of Updating Applications

Haven't yet. We have only built one app and have not needed to update it yet. I will say that the original design is one where getting information out to another app in Quick Base is easy. You can export data to CSV easy enough. To get the data into a database like Oracle or Access, you must purchase an ODBC, but then you can interact with other systems. Since the app is web-based, any API makes linkage to Workato, Zappo, or other programs a cinch. But I would think updating the app is easy since you simply right click and say add field.

Likelihood to Recommend

The tool is well worth it and will make things a lot easier. The project we have was originally started in Access, then moved into SharePoint, but the ease of Quick Base is well worth the transition. I mostly agree with the concept that if you can say it, Quick Base can do it. But understand, it's a different tool, but extremely effective. The ability to integrate your entire company into one tool as opposed to what is currently out there.

Products Replaced

Yes - m-Power, SharePoint, and Trello. The tools are good, but given our particular need, they just fell short. We extensively use Office and Oracle, but the problem is our organization is spread out across the country and each group builds a tool for their needs. Thus, we were always reinventing the wheel. Quick Base is changing that, making us more efficient.

Key Differentiators

Product Features
Product Usability

I had no say in the purchase. But the tool is great and extremely easy to use. It comes packed with reporting and that is key within our company to try and work more efficiently. Our rep is great and extremely helpful and the IT people are tops. Any company that will call you back within 1 hour is unheard of, and I have told the CEO, in person, that very thing.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

I had no choice in the selection. Our group was tasked with providing feedback, which was positive since dealing with Quick Base is fast, easy, and efficient. If I were to evaluate a tool like Quick Base for purchase, I would spend more time to verify that the software would meet all the company needs, which was not initially done.

Quick Base as a Project Management Solution

Overall Satisfaction with Quick Base