Don’t have the exact technical skills, time or knowledge to integrate Quickbase with other systems? Not a problem. We at Quickbase have established partnerships with certified Quickbase Solution Providers (QSP’s) that can help you get to just where you need to be.
QSP’s are independent professional services organizations specialized in developing customized apps for your unique business needs using our platform. They are vetted and trusted by us to work with our customers and have direct access to our sales, care, and product staff.
This Q&A will hopefully give you a more comprehensive view of our Partner of the Year 2017: Data Collaborative. Data Collaborative also won this year’s award for Expand MVP, and shared the award of Services MVP with VARC Solutions. Congratulations!
What are some of the customer offerings you have delivered to make you Quickbase Partner of the Year?
Our goal is to solve our client’s business problems. We use Quickbase as the tool and a strong background in database development as the foundation. The real key to our success is taking the time to listen to what our clients are asking for. Today’s businesses are often using 4, 5 or more SaaS offerings to run their business. They may use Hubspot for lead generation, SalesForce for their funnel, Quickbase for project management, Google apps for productivity and QuickBooks for accounting. Our extensive experience with complex application integrations allows us to help our customers connect their data so there is an effortless flow from lead, all the way to invoicing.
We also recognize that many clients want to do their own Quickbase development. That’s great because they know their business better than anyone. But often they hit difficulties they don’t know how to overcome. We set up screen-shares with them and work alongside them, on an hourly basis, to make them Quickbase experts so they can keep growing with Quickbase, leveraging their internal knowledge as well as our expertise.
Tell us about your most successful projects? What were the results?
We have been extremely lucky to have worked on hundreds of interesting and very successful projects.Two that come to mind are:
The Trust Company of Vermont, which is an investment firm that manages over $1B in assets, came to us because they were using a system that was being discontinued. They needed to:
- Track all customer interactions and maintain the firm’s reputation of outstanding customer service
- Transition all data before old platform was discontinued
- Maximize Quickbase and overcome the limitations of the past
To meet their requirements, DC created a flexible and efficient QB database that prevents duplicate data. We added many-to-many and cross application relationships so that they could search for information easily, built reports and gave them improved search functionality, and made it easy to add new customers with related notes.
The results for this customer included a 50-60% improvement in streamlining operations. They were thrilled with the straightforward UI, and the fact that the learning curve wasn’t steep. Finally, since we were in such close communication around what we were building (and how), the team at The Trust Company of Vermont has gone on to build 8+ new applications on their own!
Santa Clara University’s New Student Welcome Program depends on volunteers to contact and personally congratulate newly accepted students. At the time they contacted us they were spending 100+ hours tracking all of this in Excel, with no additional capacity for the increasing number of accepted students per year (6-8,000) or for tracking the volunteers (400-500) progress.
To meet their requirements, DC created a Quickbase application to manage the New Student Welcome Program. We built a web-based portal to give volunteers online access to permission based information stored in Quickbase and added a GeoLocator app to automatically match volunteers and students.
The results for this customer were fantastic. The Alumni Office can track the process from start to finish in Quickbase, saving the staff 75 hours on average each year. The app reduces volunteer time and strengthens their relationship with the school as it is easy for them to participate in the program. According to one volunteer, “I LOVED the new volunteer portal for the New Student Welcome Program! No more pen and paper and I was able to access my students whenever and wherever via my phone.”
Who would be your ideal client, and why?
Our ideal client would be one with whom we can build a long term relationship. We feel like we can provide the greatest value not with a quick hit, but by being a resource over many years. Every modern business needs to constantly evolve to keep up with changes their customers and competitors make. Your database needs to grow with you. We believe that a partner who is available not just for big projects, but for that quick phone call or for a small project that needs to be done tomorrow, is giving you the opportunity to get the very most out of Quickbase. We want to be that partner.
