What Do You Call Your Quickbase Hero?

Last December, my colleagues and I saw a fun post on the Quickbase Facebook fan page. It read “Jared Gilbert has been dubbed ‘Captain Quickbase by his coworkers.”It even came complete with a ‘Captain Quickbase’ Christmas Tree ornament ! Love it!

I was curious to understand how Jared landed this fabulous title, so I tracked him down to learn more!

As an Associate eProject Manager at Elsevier – the world’s leading publisher of science and health information, Jared wears multiple hats – web editor, project manager and Quickbase expert! One of the primary tools he and his team rely on day in and day out to get their jobs done is Intuit’s online database Quickbase.

Prior to Quickbase, they were using spreadsheets and sending them around via email. With this, Jared and team experienced version control issues, formatting issues and even problems getting files to open properly. At any given time, there are 4-5 people involved in tracking project progress and it can become a bit messy.

Here’s a snapshot of my interview with Jared:

Quickbase: What is the importance of Quickbase to your business?

Jared Gilbert: Collaboration. We are a global company and work with many different team members on our projects. We have external freelancers, editors in the office, course authors all over the country and having a central location where we can track ideas, documents, track status and deadlines, and even deliver content to developers is very important. Including internal and external resources, there are about 50 people within my group using Quickbase.

We are using Quickbase to keep track of all projects. It’s become a standard repository and a place where we can analyze all data. Managers use it to view status and project deadlines. Invoices, freelancer resource allocation and time off are all tracked in a Quickbase application now as well.

In addition, we deal heavily with rich media – flash, animations, asset libraries – and we use Quickbase to track it all.

“Quickbase is my default answer to everything.”

QB: How has Quickbase impacted your team?

JG: Quickbase has become such an integral part of our process. I can’t even imagine work without it. We would be severely handicapped. In my group, we have been responding to more requests and operating with quicker development times. Quickbase saves us months of production time. For one project, developer costs were cut by 25% with the processes we started using in Quickbase.

We’ve eliminated email confusion and miscommunication. Quickbase is a way to help ensure the most accurate info is shared by taking email out of the equation. Just by relying on Quickbase notifications and reminders, we’ve automated our workflow.

QB: What’s the one thing about Quickbase that has really made an impact in your business?

JG: It’s hard to narrow down. But if I had to land on one thing…Its flexibility. Every product and every project is different and we need to accommodate for that. Even if we’re using Quickbase in a standard way, I can quickly customize new reports to view data in a useful format. Our developers are even starting to use the reports, too. My teams don’t need to know anything about databases to use it. It’s very easy to use.

QB: One final question for ‘Captain Quickbase’…would you recommend Quickbase?

JG: Yes. I’ve demonstrated Quickbase to quite a few other teams within my current company. I showed Quickbase to my Director – and they quickly realized the power of the solution and saw opportunity for expansion among different teams at Elsevier.

Tell Us Your Story

If you are a Quickbase Hero and revolutionizing the way work is being done in your organization – we want to hear your story! There are lots of ways to share your success stories – whether it’s by participating in this blog, presenting at events, providing a quote or even sending in a video testimonial. All you have to do is let me know you’re interested and I’ll work with you to help make it happen.

About Elsevier:

Serving more than 30 million scientists, students and health and information professional worldwide, Elsevier is the world’s leading publisher of science and health information. Known for developing online information solutions that help professionals achieve better outcomes, the company publishes around 2,000 journals and close to 20,000 books and major reference works.