I recently spoke with Bill Lucchini, VP and General Manager at QuickBase and Peter Fearey, the Group Marketing Manager. QuickBase is a hosted Enterprise 2.0 application platform designed for business users. It has actually been available in the market since 1999, when QuickBase was acquired by Intuit, the maker of financial management software for individuals and businesses such as QuickBooks®, Quicken® and TurboTax®. Bill said it was an application before its time in the early 00s but revenue has picked up considerably in the past two years as QuickBase fits well within Web 2.0. It tends to get introduced into enterprises in small numbers through individual project teams, sound familiar? QuickBase now has a beachhead in more than half of the Fortune 100. More on the enterprise penetration process later.

QuickBase lets you select ready-made online workgroup applications or templates designed to solve common business problems, customize them to suit individual processes, and share within a team. Most people can modify applications on their own, without enlisting help from their IT department. The applications organize information for easy access, track information, and allow it to be more easily shared. They also promote workflow and facilitate action.

The tool is designed to be user driven to let teams design applications around their preferred processes and not have to change their process to conform to the “best practices” embedded in many traditional workflow-related apps. They have developed a number of templates in such areas as project management, sales management, SOX compliance, such departments as HR, IT, marketing, and legal, as well as such verticals as real estate management, professional services, and healthcare.

I saw a demo and it looked easy enough for even me to use. The templates, such as project management, come with varying degrees of complexity, so you can choose your desired depth. There are role-based dashboards, reports, timelines, calendars, and much more. You can also remove stuff if you find it too complex or covering activities you do not do and you can customize the features that you decide to retain such reports. Workflow features include automated e-mail notifications that can also be customized on a variety of features.

QuickBase sounds and looks like a very flexible and useful tool that certainly fits the spirit of enterprise 2.0. People often start with one application and then see how it can be used for other tasks. After that QuickBase starts to proliferate across the organization for other uses and other areas. I was especially interested in how it has made significant inroads into large enterprises. QuickBase often first arrives under the eye of IT through business teams of 20 to 30 users.

The QuickBase team decided the take the IT adoption and approval process head on. Now they often call CIOs and IT leaders and tell them about QuickBase’s use within the organization. They approached this notification at first with some healthy concern. Would the IT people get upset and rip it out? There is a happy ending here as this has not happened. They have not gotten thrown out and, in many cases the IT people have added additional seats and uses once they understand the benefits to the business users. In many cases, IT often uses QuickBase to solve their own problems, such as help desk tracking, project portfolio management and project management.

QuickBase also added some components for IT. In addition to a range of security features, they provide an oversight capability so IT can monitor the QuickBase use. The teams retain control but IT can see what is happening and learn from it. The only top down control offered is LDAP for secured log on.

When they started this sales process, they had over 2,000 seats in one enterprise. Now they have reached this number in 13 organizations and it is growing. There is much opportunity for more growth beyond 2,000. Intuit, their parent company, has 8,000 employees but it has 35,000 QuickBase seats as they use it to work with their suppliers and other partners in their extended enterprise. In this user population there are 30,000 different applications. They recently used it to coordinate housing and other support for employees displaced by the San Diego fires.

I think there are some good enterprise 2.0 adoption lessons from QuickBase that can benefit all of us. Confront IT head on and present the benefits. Do not try to stay hidden. Trust in the benefits of what you are doing and be proactive.