Empower Your Employees!
November 16, 2016
Empower Your Employees!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with QuickBase
We use Quickbase to accomplish two goals. We use the "pre programmed" CRM for our Business Development team within the Training and Education Department and we use a custom database to track our course accreditation. The BD team within the Training and Education Department is new, because of this we needed a simple tool to help them adjust to their new roles. The QuickBase CRM was very easy for them to understand and use while helping each member keep track of potential leads, wins and losses. As for the course accreditation, this was all being done on paper which is not conducive to any type of analysis or growth. In order to determine what states require what and how we are tracking in each state in terms of accreditation requests, this can not be a paper process. It holds back our growth and that does nothing for the business.
- The pre-coded databases are such an amazing tool! Why rebuild the wheel when QuickBase has done the work for you? These aren't "light" databases either, they come pre-loaded with reporting features and the ability to customize. A real time saver.
- I also like that you can get a subscription with or without support. While we were getting started, having the lifeline out there when we needed it was wonderful. The support folks really review your goals with you and provide really helpful advice especially if you are building something customized.
- The ability to create your own database is a great option. The fact that you can code down to the email notification generation really puts you in control of your data. Also, the ability to make changes to your database on the fly means you are not waiting for programmers to do the work for you.
- I would like to see training videos specific to each type of pre-made database. It does not need to be anything extensive, maybe just a quick navigational tour to show everything the database can do. That would save time and help to determine if we want to go customized or pre-made.
- I appreciate your sales team checking in to see how we are doing, but I think there could be a bit more method to the madness as it seems like "random" check ins. Perhaps, if they see the database is not getting used give a call to see what the issue is.
- Training videos on how to code common things like email notifications. Again, a quick video tutorial would be great. I am sure they have a "hit list" of common questions, maybe cover those first. Then when we get into the live conference call with the QuickBase professional, we are a bit better able to ask educated questions. We just may need a bit of "pre work" to prepare and that is missing right now.
We were able to get our CRM up and running in a matter of minutes and since the database was basically already made, we just had to customize some of the details in the tables. We now are able to track our leads, have an actual pipeline and a way to measure our successes! Creating habits of the employees is the more difficult part as they are not used to using a CRM, but as they see the benefits, they are beginning to dive into the finer details of the technology.
While Salesforce is an all encompassing solution, it was just too big and too costly for our needs. It would be like killing ant with a nuclear weapon. We didn't need all those bells and whistles at this point as the team is just learning about CRM technology. As the team gains comfort with the CRM, they will be better able to say, "it would be great if the CRM did this (fill in the blank)" and then we would see if we could code that into QuickBase.
We did not use our IT department at all to deploy our databases, we relied on our team knowledge and QuickBase support. The team is not technical by any means and would fall into the category of "citizen developers." The admin build tools are very intuitive and what we didn't know the QuickBase support team was able to demonstrate for us, so it was really not very hard. Also, we only have to build once, so the need for folks to become fluent DBAs is not necessary. We were able to get our CRM up and running within a matter of hours.
- Improving our ability to drive insights from our data
- Improving collaboration across one or more teams
- Solving a specific business challenge
Since using a CRM is new to this department we are constantly tweaking it and it has become very simple for any member of the team to do. Also, the team is now able to speak the lingo of database technology so they are better able to discuss the functionality they are looking for in technical terms and think through the impact of the change. Updates are easy, they are actually enjoyable as the team gets very excited with being able to personally manage this vital work tool. They don't have to depend on anyone anymore, it's a very empowering feeling for them.