Quick Base Puts Out as Much as You Put In
April 14, 2020
Quick Base Puts Out as Much as You Put In
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Quick Base
QuickBase is being used by our Sales Team to track account interactions, including phone calls, visits, text messages, and emails. It's allowed us to gain insight into the relationship between account visits and successful sales reps. In particular, there is a strong correlation between the sheer number of account visits and rep success which we wouldn't have uncovered without QuickBase, and we've only implemented it 6 months ago. In time, I think it will help us understand what makes reps successful and will help us guide their efforts.
- Customization - It is fully custom and can accommodate any needs your business requires in every facet of the application from table structure to user roles and access
- Ease of Use - We have an older sales team that is very behind on technology, but with a 15-minute introduction, we've seen a 100% adoption rate, even in reps who insisted they wanted to keep using their pencil and paper methods.
- Scaling Setup Difficulty - If you're just trying to do something fairly simple in QuickBase, it's incredibly simple to create. If you're trying to do something a little more complex it's harder to create, but the difficulty scales linearly with the complexity of the design, which is very good design.
- Reporting - Reporting capability is extremely limited using the canned reporting models given by the system to the point where I simply export the data to Excel to manipulate and analyze it
- Requires Understanding of Relational Table Database Logic - Although the understanding of the logic is extremely base level, you do need to know how tables work together; this may be a very difficult product to use in a setting where the application design team doesn't have a background in systems or Excel.
We have achieved this benefit with our sales rep tracking application. When I was first brought on at my company, they asked me to find and purchase a CRM for the sales team. However, after talking with the head of the sales team I realized they didn't want a CRM as it was too complex and required too much data input. A traditional CRM would have just inconvenienced the reps for no benefit. With QuickBase, the system was implemented with bare-bones requirements, only needing the rep to put in the date that the account visit had occurred and the account name. This allowed end-users to get used to the interface and application for a month or two while the requirements were extremely simple, and allowed a 2-week development and rollout timeline. Today, any activities captured in the system also require a half dozen key specific metrics that weren't even in the initial system build, and we are still maintaining a 100% utilization rate. Allowing the users to get used to a simple version of the system before scaling it in complexity has been vital to its success.
- Building and deploying business applications faster
- Improving our ability to drive insights from our data
- Solving a specific business challenge
- Building and deploying an application (or multiple applications) that meets our exact needs
- Building and Deploying Applications Faster: What was projected to be a 6-month period required for development and rollout was done in 2 weeks with QuickBase.
- Improving Ability to Drive Insights from Data: Until now, there was no ability to correlate sales rep activity and results. With QuickBase, their actual activity data is compared to their success to help leadership guide underperforming reps to achieve more.
- Solving a Specific Business Challenge: This was initially considered a CRM purchase as up until this point reps had been tracking account visits with pen and paper, which was completely outdated and meant that the value of the data that reps knew wasn't being kept in the company. Now, all of the reps' information is stored in the system and will be retained permanently.
- Building and Deploying an Application to Meet Exact Needs: When I was brought onboard, the CRM options I was presented with all met some of our needs, but not all. QuickBase met these needs exactly because I designed and built it to do so.
Since the rollout of our sales rep management application, we have made many updates and upgrades to the system. As we grow and expand into new territories, it was required to add a regional structure to the system. Though this was newer and more complex logic, I was able to build and implement it within a week's time (with the help of QuickBase's Customer Success team). This has allowed deeper reporting insights and has made it possible to give access to regional level executives so they can monitor their sales teams' success, so it was a huge upgrade to system functionality.