Why QuickBase works for us.
Updated December 08, 2017
Why QuickBase works for us.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Quick Base
Quickbase is being used in various ways across the company. It is most often used to streamline MS Access, spreadsheet or manual processes.
- Quickbase provides an easy to use interface to build custom applications without a lot of programming experience.
- Quickbase has strong native integration capabilities that can allow a developer to use an excel source and replace it with a QB app in just a few minutes.
- Quickbase has an excellent comprehensive API layer that allows for quick and easy integrations with other systems.
- Quickbase could really use some improvement in allowing users to easily and simply customize the UI to better meet their needs.
- I would love to see alternate keys be available for building foreign key relationships on tables as well as multi-column key values.
Yes we have seen this happen, typically to build a custom application from scratch we would see a 2 to 3 man full time IT developer team work for at least a few months in order to deliver the tool to production. With Quickbase we often see an app go live in just a few weeks with 1 or 2 non-IT citizen developers working on it.
We have evaluated Salesforce App Cloud and we find that Quickbase requires less technical expertise with comparable deliverables at a lower price point.
We use our citizen developers for almost all of our applications and they are able to handle 80% - 90% of all requirements without involving IT. None of our citizen developers have a formal IT background and are usually able to deliver an app or new feature set to production in 4 to 6 weeks.
- Building and deploying business applications faster
- Improving our ability to drive insights from our data
We have been able to drastically reduce our development timelines since we have started using Quickbase. We also see significant savings by offloading development to business users rather than expensive IT resources. Quickbase's ability to integrate with other systems has allowed us to integrate data from those processes into our enterprise reporting and data warehouse repositories. Previously a lot of this data was trapped in spreadsheets and was not easy to access for reporting.
Recently we found an issue with one of our apps that help us maintain our inventory counts. There was a problem with the FIFO logic we had implemented through a custom code page. We were able to get the page updated, delete the bad counts in grid edit view and recreate them correctly. The whole process took less than a couple of hours.
Using Quick Base
300 - We cover a wide breath of functions accounting, operations, project management, inventory management, accounts receivable, and estimate creation
5 - Quick Base support personnel need to have strong analytical skills, an intuitive mind for business process, impeccable communication skills and a familiarity with basic development concepts like a background as an Excel power user or any experience with scripting or formula writing.
- Project Management
- Operations Management
- Ability to integrate seamlessly with other systems.
- Self Service Development for business units leading to very decreased development time
- Lots of small one-off spreadsheet replacement applications that cumulatively save a ton of time
- Equipment Tracking
- It has enabled us to scale by making manual project management tasks automated and programmatic
Evaluating Quick Base and Competitors
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
Usability, we needed an easy, intuitive low-code/no-code tool
I don't think I would have changed a thing
Quick Base Implementation
- Implemented in-house
Change management was a minor issue with the implementation
- Inexperience
- Data Integration
Quick Base Training
- Self-taught
Yes I think some light formal training would have been beneficial
Configuring Quick Base
We need to be able to define alternate foreign keys
No - we have not done any customization to the interface
Yes - we have added extensive custom code - we use if for applying recursive logic and auto generating child records. For a person without a programming background it would be very difficult, we had a programmer do it and it was not difficult for him.
Table size limits need to be eliminated
Quick Base Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
We had an internal security cert expire, it was our fault but support got it implemented for us within minutes and we were back up and running.
Using Quick Base
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Familiar | None |
- Quick Table Creation
- Form Creation
- Report Creation
- Limited table relationship options
- Table size constraints
Yes - It works fairly well. We honestly only have couple real use cases though
Quick Base Reliability
Integrating Quick Base
- SQL Server
- Tableau
Regular full back end ETL processes that pull data every few minutes. It was not difficult to achieve with a team of professional ETL developers.
- File import/export
- Single Signon
- API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
- ETL tools
no
Increase the API call limits
Relationship with Quick Base
Right now we are billed per user with a significant discount off list over a one year term.
Be honest, communicate your growth potential and be willing to partner with them and provide marketable feedback.
Upgrading Quick Base
Yes - Yes totally as expected. No unexpected impacts.
- Changes to menus
- Default collapsed menus
- additional user interface tools
Yes - As a SaaS tool, I have no control over the QB deployments and have confidence in their ability to improve their tool and provide continuity.