Migrating From MS Access to An Online Database: Formation Healthcare’s Story

June 25, 2009 at 11:40 am · Filed under Sponsored Post

Why Bringing Data Online Is Better For Business

If you haven’t read the post 6 Reasons to Move Your Data Online Now! – on how to facilitate communication, collaboration and productivity via an online database – it’s not too late to download the whitepaper and dig deeper into some of the reasons why businesses may want to consider moving their data online. Today, I’ll be sharing with you how and why Formation Healthcare recently migrated their data from MS Access to QuickBase, Intuit’s online database solution.

Assessing, analyzing and monitoring quality of regulatory measures in the nursing home industry is a process that Formation Healthcare knows well. They rely on surveys and certification processes to identify potential risks and currently monitor those risks for the lenders, investors and owners of 300 plus nursing homes across the country. As the company has grown, the spreadsheets they once used to manage this process and information were replaced with a flat database. Debra Rollins, Database Manager at Formation Healthcare, explained this flat database was eventually replaced with a complex, web-enabled ODBC database which served their information needs until that solution also recently became too limiting for the changing needs of Formation Healthcare, Debra and the team.

With 5 remote employees and 8 remote operators needing access to up to date reporting – Debra found that even though her MS Access database was web-enabled – she was still sending the team a new database app every time queries and reports were updated. Additionally, when sharing the reports/queries, there was a certain degree of risk involved in the process. Trissie Farr, VP of Formation Healthcare stated, “We wanted to protect the mechanics of our queries and formulas and with MS Access, we found that we had potential risk for ‘pirating’, utilizing that platform.” Debra further explained that even though the ODBC Access database was password protected and each form had additional read only / edit security, Access does not allow security for the modules which contain the security coding itself. Being in such a highly regulated industry, information accessibility and security were two important factors for Formation Healthcare.

So the search began for a secure, yet easily-accessible online database. Most of the solutions that Debra evaluated required her to convert her Access database data into a spreadsheet (csv. document) and then import it into the new system. For a simple application, that may have worked; but Debra’s application consisted of 30 plus tables and 17 relationships, with 11 of those relationships in one table. She simply didn’t have that kind of time to do it herself, so she kept looking. When evaluating QuickBase, she learned that Intuit offers an Access to QuickBase migration service* that did exactly what she was looking for. The Access to QuickBase migration took approximately 4-5 hours and was conducted by one of Intuit’s QuickBase Business Consultants. Since then, Debra and Trissie are becoming big fans of QuickBase – realizing the sheer power of QuickBase they are excited to continue customizing it and rolling it out to the rest of their organization.

My favorite quote from Debra was that “QuickBase has an extremely easy UI (user interface); however, it is truly deceiving and really is much more powerful than it initially appears. It’s like going from driving a Yugo to driving a Maserati! QuickBase is the Maserati!”

Intuit QuickBase

Six Reasons To Move Your Data Online Now!

May 13, 2009 at 9:30 am · Filed under Web 2.0

Eight months ago, I set out to deliver a whitepaper that would serve as a guide to purchasing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for businesses and teams looking for a better way to manage information. And then that topic led into a more specific focus around the fact that business needs have evolved and a discussion of how more traditional desktop databases, like MS Access and spreadsheets (that are really meant for single-users and too often misused as databases) have become more of a hindrance than help – in the sense that they inhibit the ability to easily share and collaborate quickly.

The end product is a guide entitled ‘Maximizing the Power of your Desktop Database: Top business advantages of moving your data online.’ Today, I’ll share with you the first of six benefits of moving your data online:

#1: It facilitates communication, collaboration and productivity:

Unlike desktop databases (that are often tied to a single client interface), many online databases are built to be widely shared with internal and external teams. Any users with access to a web browser can interact with the data – regardless of operating system and where they might be at any given time. Sharing information among vendors, customers or business partners is common practice today and is much easier to do via a web-interface than trying to get them access to data residing on your corporate network. The hoops one may have to jump through with IT to enable that are ones that often waste time – valuable time that could be spent working on a specific project, customer case or partner effort with the parties that are meant to have access to the specific business data relevant to the initiative.

Successful businesses have long understood that managing critical data—and transforming that data into usable information—is key to informing the business intelligence that enables productivity, agility, and competitive advantage. Many of these organizations have traditionally relied upon desktop solutions to house such data, but are growing increasingly frustrated with their lack of flexibility, scalability, and security—as well as the administrative headaches and costs of supporting them. Online databases offer an attractive alternative to desktop products, combining speed of implementation and ease of use with the collaborative functions required to inform and power organizations’ unique business processes and performance.

Feel free to download the rest of the guide here in order to access the other 5 reasons, as well as some of the short-comings of desktop-databases in today’s work environment.

The AppGap

Does Your Company Suffer From ‘Sneakernet’?

December 16, 2008 at 3:54 pm · Filed under Sponsored Post

A Customer Story

‘Sneakernet’ is a term that I was first introduced to during a conversation with one of our customers  – Ed Metz, vice president and director of technical services at Robert Berning Productions, a creative communications and marketing solutions agency. As he explained, back in 2003 the company with a total of 13 employees at the time was suffering from ’sneakernet’.

So what is it? In Ed’s words it was the very manual process of walking down the hall to pick up a form, fill it out, go downstairs, deliver the order to the production staff, and then walk back upstairs, bringing one copy to the department supervisor and finally one copy to bookkeeping? You get the point.

This process had been in place for several years and was causing problems: often there was incomplete information on the form; a rush order could end up at the bottom of the stack or even lost; as orders were revised, other copies of the form would then be outdated. And forget about finding an old order with valuable information from a couple years back. Also, there was a tendency to issue verbal orders, simply because the paperwork was so cumbersome.

Ed knew that he needed to bring order to this antiquated process and had researched many software options for automating the work order system, including traditional database management and hosted workgroup application software. Ease of use was important, since Metz is a filmmaker and photographer by trade — not an IT professional.

One of my favorite quotes from him: “QuickBase made it easy for me to do what I wanted to with the software without having a lot of technical expertise. Compared to Microsoft Access or Filemaker, the ability to set up multiple related tables is a snap; QuickBase does much of the work for me. If I do have a question about a formula or report design, the active online Community Forum is a great resource.”

Since 2003,  Robert Berning Productions has doubled its revenue, grown to 20 employees, saved 50 staff hours per month in staff meetings, reclaimed four staff hours per month by eliminating manual work order distribution, eliminated incidences of misplaced or incomplete work orders, spent less time processing work orders and had more resources focused on client work with the help of QuickBase.

QuickBase

Out of this Galaxy – Delivering Premium Customer Service Has Never Been So Easy

November 14, 2008 at 2:51 pm · Filed under QuickBase, Reviews, Sponsored Post

Luke Winter and Tristan Kampman bought Granola Galaxy 3 years ago when the company served less than 100 customers direct, mostly in its Northern California home market.  They liked the product, the brand and the potential opportunity for growth.

And grow it did.  Galaxy has added over 1,000 stores since Luke and Tristan showed up.  For the first two years, they used Excel to manage their customer information.  It didn’t scale and Luke nearly lost his mind trying to keep track of it all.  Out of frustration, Luke commented, “It doesn’t matter how good you are in Excel, it’s just not meant to be used as a database.” Yet so many people are using and abusing spreadsheets in this capacity. Luke and Tristan set out on a search for an appropriate database/CRM tool. Their requirements for the solution were that it must be customizable and flexible.

‘We considered Filemaker and Access; but knew it would require a lot of work to get started and we didn’t have that time and energy to put towards it. And Salesforce wasn’t quite customizable enough for our needs,’ said Luke.

So they decided on QuickBase and have been using it since January 2008 for their customer service management needs – specifically tracking the status of customers, where customers are located, what product the customers carry and how much they have in inventory at any given time, as well as other associated activities like in-store demo schedules and staffing. Recently Galaxy has moved their Purchase Order management to the QuickBase platform. Luke said, ‘QuickBase helps us provide a level of customer service and follow-up comparable to that of much larger companies.’

Even though Galaxy Granola is a small operation today, they are serving large customers across the US like Whole Foods, Wegman’s, and Albertson’s. They’ve got big plans for growth and that includes increased usage of QuickBase over time. As their business needs and processes evolve, QuickBase applications can evolve with them.

Luke commented, ‘QuickBase is a customizable online database that can be used for a variety of business functions. We really value the flexibility the product has to offer. QuickBase has a huge advantage there. We can adapt and make changes on the fly.’

QuickBase

Small business customer uses QuickBase to streamline work

August 15, 2008 at 12:59 pm · Filed under Collaboration, QuickBase, Sponsored Post, Web Apps

Last January, I sat down with the CTO of Zopa Inc., Rajesh Jayaraman to find out how he got started with QuickBase and how the company is benefiting from using it today. With just 13 employees, Zopa Inc., a small global business and pioneer in social finance, relied on QuickBase for project and task tracking at first, and has since grown its pool of applications to include partner management and customer support.

When we spoke, Rajesh had expressed that he wanted low maintenance, web-based software to keep everyone on the same page. He wanted a tool that was easy for people to use; but not so simple that it lacked in functionality. Once employees and partners took to QuickBase, the task of collaboration for everyone became far less intensive – from a time and effort perspective. Overall Rajesh felt as though work had become much more streamlined with QuickBase. Listen to Rajesh’s story here.

Just a few months ago, Rajesh also participated in an interview with IDC analyst, Judy Hodges. The IDC buyer case study summarizing the interview is a great piece for anyone considering SaaS to help run their business. If you happen to be a small business, the story is all that more pertinent. The study dives even deeper into how Zopa decided to purchase QuickBase and how they’ve become more efficient and productive since using the solution.

From a web-based applications vendor perspective, I found the first and last portion of the case study to be of interest – where IDC guides vendors on how to best serve small businesses. I’m a bit biased; but to me, it sounds like QuickBase is on the right track.

Download the case study.

QuickBase