by Bill Ives
October 29, 2007 at 8:05 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
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.
by Rob Paterson
October 29, 2007 at 9:15 am · Filed under
Blue Monster, Chris Anderson, Enterprise 2.0, Fox, Gaping Void, Hugh McLeod, Hulu.com, Long Tail, NBC, NPR, News Corporation, PBS, Public Media, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Objects, Web Advertising, Wired
Hulu.com is an important experiment for how TV will shift from being available only when the broadcaster schedules it to when we want it – Having it My Way!
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(From the NYT) Hulu is the new-media creation of two old-media rivals, NBC, which is owned by General Electric, and Fox, owned by the News Corporation. Since March, when the broadcasters announced their joint effort to bring free, ad-supported television shows to the Web, critics have pounced, predicting the venture would be doomed by diverging agendas, technical challenges and an all-powerful enemy: YouTube.
Skeptical bloggers even slapped Hulu with a derisive moniker: “Clown Co.”
Now the defense is ready to present its case.
Today, Hulu, now an independent company with more than a hundred employees and its own offices in Los Angeles, will begin privately testing its new service with select users at Hulu.com. It will also begin sending its videos to the sites of five distribution partners, Microsoft, AOL, MySpace, Yahoo and Comcast.
Hulu is presenting select episodes of some 90 television shows, including new and old programs from NBC (“The Office,” “The A-Team”), Fox (“24” and “The Simpsons”) and an assortment of smaller broadcasters like USA Networks. It has also added two new partners, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which distributes programs like “Chapelle’s Show” and “Reno 911,” and Sony Pictures Television, which will make selections in its archives like “I Dream of Jeannie,” available on Hulu.com.
All the shows are viewable inside a Web browser and festooned with advertisements.
However Hulu works out – they are on a track that is clear – people want video as they ant their music:
- Easy to find
- Available in chunks
- Available ON THE WEB – when they want it and usable on a variety of platforms such as an iPod and a 50inch HD LCD screen
Who pays and how will still be settled.
Also what I think Hulu has missed is the value of creating community around a show – this is Hugh’s great insight about Social Objects – it is the Conversation around the object that is more important than the object.
3. The Blue Monster wine is also part of the “Smarter Wine” conversation. The main thesis is that it’s not the wine per se that is interesting, it’s the conversations that happen around the wine that is interesting. And that is true for all social objects. People matter. Objects don’t.
The advertising money is shifting to the web – so will the content – it will go there faster than we imagine. For the laws of exponetial growth are in force. I think that the Tipping point is here:
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I think that Broadcast TV is now in the Titanic Mode – It is large and feels unsinkable – BUT – the ship has grazed the ice – at the moment no one feels anything – but the wound is fatal and it is only a matter of time before the ship sinks.
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The Iceberg is the weight of money that is leaving conventional media and going to the web. My forecast is that 2008 will be the year – 2008 will be the year where the web/digital will become where the ad money will go – the work for all providers of all types of content then will be to reset their universe.
Today most people in TV and radio see the web as a growing and important channel. In 2008, the smart people will see the web as the primary channel and that their old channel is now the supporting channel. Of course most will not see this and they will be lucky to find a life boat.
You think I exaggerate? Here is Chris Anderson on the “Music Industry” I quote him in full:
At a speech last week I was asked a question that has come up every day since the Radiohead (and Madonna, NIN, Prince, etc, etc) announcement: What’s going to happen to the music industry?
To which I answered “Which music industry?” You don’t mean just the one that sells CDs, do you? Because it’s a big mistake to equate the major labels and their plastic disc business with the industry as a whole. Indeed, when you stand back and look at all of music, things don’t look so bad at all.
Indeed, it appears that every single part of the music industry except the sale of compact discs is up.
- Concerts and merchandise: UP (+4%)
- Digital tracks: UP (+46%)
- Ringtones: UP (+86% last year, but probably just single-digit percent this year)
- Licensing for commercials, TV shows, movies and videogames: UP (Warner Music saw licensing grow by about $20 million over the past year)
- Even vinyl singles (think DJs): UP (more than doubled in the UK)
- And, if you include the iPod in the music industry, as I’d argue a fair-minded analysis would: UP, UP, UP! (+31% this year)
Only CDs are down (-18%). They’re around 60% of the industry not including the MP3 players, but just around 25% if you do include them.
So the problem with the music labels is not that music is an industry in decline, but that they have a too-narrow view of what business they’re in. Madonna’s switch from a label to a concert promoter should be a clue. This quote from an excellent article (it’s worth reading it all) in Entertainment Weekly says it all:
”Soon a lot of these companies won’t define themselves as record companies,” says Steve Greenberg, the former head of Columbia Records who now runs the independent record company S-Curve. ”They’ll define themselves as artist development companies. If you’re involved in an entire career with an artist, then everyone’s interests can be aligned.”
I think most music will soon be free, as artists give away the product as marketing for their performances and licensing, and as a celebrity accelerant that creates more opportunities to make money than just from the sale of a record.
And for those who say that this avenue is only available to artists at the head of the curve, such as Madonna and Radiohead, I’d point out that the other group poorly served by the labels are those at the bottom of the curve, the many thousands of bands who fall below the radar of the hit-driven majors. I’d argue that they, too, have nothing to lose by letting their music go free, nothing to lose but the prospect of becoming indentured to companies stuck in last century’s model of monetizing music.
Most people see TV and Radio like the people who make CD’s. All the forces that are turning the music industry upside down are coming to TV and Radio – for after all – a video and an audio file are the same as music – they are in reality all digital now.
by Rob Paterson
October 28, 2007 at 11:47 am · Filed under
Emergency, Enterprise 2.0, KPBS, Mobile Phones, NPR, News, PBS, Public Media, Social Media, Twitter, University, Web 2.0
Here is a short but informative report by NPR on KPBS’s historic use of Social Media to cover the fire. One of the key Apps was “My Maps” -
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The Google map has had over 1.2 million hits and even the fire fighters used it as The Source. Google themlseves have been a huge help and gave support to KPBS as the load on the map increased.
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I think that the fire and KPBS’s work has been a watershed for public broadcasting – their work has shown that a small station with few staff can offer the public a huge service in an emergency.
More – it also shows universities who are all struggling to find a process to help their own communities in an emergency such as the recent shootings can do so in an affordable manner.
by Joe McKendrick
October 25, 2007 at 1:37 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Messy World, Microsoft, Social Media, Web 2.0
I guess Microsoft doesn’t want to be left behind in the Web 2.0 revolution after all. The software giant even beat Google to the punch, putting up a $240 million equity stake in the social networking site.
As part of this newly expanded “strategic alliance,” Microsoft will be the exclusive third-party advertising platform partner for Facebook, and will begin to sell advertising for Facebook internationally in addition to the United States.
As ZDNet’s Larry Dignan put it: “Guess Facebook isn’t a fad after all. And Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer put up $240 million to prove it.”
Larry opines that Facebook has more to lose than Microsoft in the deal. “The Microsoft deal gives Facebook a nice cash infusion for expansion. But does it make sense to hitch your ad wagon to a third-place ad platform? By locking up the U.S. and international markets, Microsoft gets a win. Facebook gets its options limited.”
Just to put things in perspective, the investment equates to about one and a half days of earnings for Microsoft — “a rounding error” on their books.
Microsoft once dominated the technology landscape to the point where it was even accused of being a monopoly. While Windows is still the predominant OS on desktops and clients, it doesn’t seem to be the force it once was. The Windows Vista launch earlier this year was a ho-hum affair, compared to the rock-and-roll razzle-dazzle that accompanied Windows 95, 98 and 2000.
That’s because end-users and companies have so many other options now. There is an open source OS that can run on any machine, not to mention resurgent Apple Macs. And, the Web platform enables people to work, interact, and play from any type of client device — if anything, the OS just seems to get in the way.
But Microsoft continues a tradition of old-line tech companies bolstering new concepts. Remember, Microsoft itself got its big break when IBM threw some of its own pocket change its way back in 1981.
