Revamped QuickBase Targets Workgroups

Businesspeople who work together closely often must share information about different projects. However, even small groups may find regular updates to be a logistical challenge. Intuit has tackled this problem by revamping its QuickBase online collaboration tool, creating two versions that facilitate sharing among teams large or small.

QuickBase was launched a year ago as a Web-based database/project tracker for small businesses. The Web site now offers a separate version that scales from large corporate workgroups to whole departments. Intuit has renamed the original QuickBase service, which it now calls QuickBase for Small Business; the new service is QuickBase for Corporate Workgroups.

Corporate workers generally need access to more (and larger) databases than small-business users do, and require a permission protocol that recognizes a hierarchical, rather than flat, organization structure, says Len Bruskiewitz, QuickBase client development manager. QuickBase tools are designed to help people share the latest notes, contact lists, schedules, and other resources across projects.

In Comparison

QuickBase prices have scaled up, too. Small-business plans start at $15 a month for up to 15 databases, each up to 2MB with 15MB worth of attached files. Corporate workgroups, on the other hand, have to make a minimum commitment of $500 a month. For that fee, you can create 50 databases 250KB in size and one 10MB in size, and add 500MB worth of attachments; each database may be accessed by up to 75 workgroup members.

That's still far less of a financial commitment than you'd make to use Lotus Notes/Domino, the granddaddy of collaborative software; the Notes spin-off Lotus QuickPlace; or even the enterprise edition of upstart Groove. A minimum setup for any of these databases costs several thousand dollars in client/server software, LAN hardware, and very likely, a technology staffer to manage it all. Groove offers a pay-per-piece Web-based collection of tools known as its Groove Workspace.

Intuit hosts all QuickBase databases, and maintains the servers and permission infrastructure. Instead of proprietary software on each client PC, QuickBase relies on the ubiquitous Internet Explorer browser. It supports Netscape 4.7 and later versions, although with more-limited functionality. Data is encrypted using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology during storage and transmission.

While QuickBase for Small Business lets only one person create or "own" the databases in an account, any QuickBase for Corporate Workgroups user can own databases and share them with anyone inside or outside the organization. You can build them from scratch, but QuickBase provides a wealth of ready-made templates for common business activities such as list building, or for the tracking of just about any asset or process.

Bruskiewitz says corporate workgroups already make up about 30 percent of an estimated 100,000 QuickBase customers. They typically use the tools to manage expansive contact lists, FAQs, and tech support knowledge bases, he adds. These users also find the software suitable for tracking projects, sales performance, and the selling cycle. Small businesses tend to maintain smaller contact and inventory lists, and their tracking of sales performance and other processes needn't be as multidimensional, he says.

Many Access Options

The key feature of QuickBase for Corporate Workgroups is that it speaks to a large organization's hierarchy. Users can set more-expansive permission for viewing and editing for those higher up the corporate ladder. For example, district, regional, and national sales managers can have increasingly greater capabilities to view, edit, and consolidate sales data from multiple geographical areas than do those who report to them.

Instead of replicating every database among every user, the corporate version lets the owner of a database specify the individuals or groups to be notified of changes--even by each field in a record. For example, different managers might receive daily sales updates only from the people in their individual districts, but a national sales manager might receive all updates. Conversely, a national sales manager might choose to see only a portion of the data on a weekly basis.

Some companies use the QuickBase Application Program Interface to display data within other applications, or to gather information from other programs and Web pages, Bruskiewitz says. Some databases are viewed by customers or vendors, so Intuit changed both versions of QuickBase to allow database owners to set access privileges at the field level. Web surfers might be able to view price and availability fields in an inventory list, but those fields can be locked so that they can't be changed; all other fields in those records can be hidden from anyone who lacks the appropriate access privileges.

Corporate Hurdles

While Intuit has had some success selling to corporate workgroups who behave like small businesses within the confines of their departmental budgets, Web services haven't been popular with corporations at large, reports Jeffrey Tarter, editor and publisher of the Soft*Letter industry newsletter.

"Big companies want to see a direct sales team with a whole network of people behind them for customization and training and technical support," Tarter says. He adds that corporate legacy systems have proven to be very difficult for PC-oriented databases to interact with on a regular basis.

Bruskiewitz thinks that what he calls the "instant gratification" of QuickBase will overcome corporate reluctance. At the end of a 30-day free trial, dissatisfied QuickBase users could export their data in a format recognized by popular PC databases or by Microsoft Excel.

"You can get going fast and know within a day whether QuickBase will work for you or not," Bruskiewitz says. Naturally, Intuit thinks that once you've tried them, the tools will be tough to live without.