How to Fine-Tune Your SMB and Overcome Challenges
As a provider of business applications and databases that are widely used to host any number of customer applications, Intuit is a company that most organizations are familiar with. Most recently, Intuit has been moving to empower citizen developers via a no-code Sync effort that provides integration between applications based on the Intuit QuickBase database and cloud applications such as Salesforce.com, QuickBooks, NetSuite, Intacct, Zuora, Zendesk and Bill.com.
Intuit this week extended the reach of that no-code effort by adding support for Comma Separated Value (CSV) files found in cloud services such as Box, Dropbox or Google Drive. John Carione, product marketing and strategy leader for Intuit, says QuickBase Sync for CSV will enable citizen developers to build more sophisticated applications without requiring any intervention on the part of an internal IT department.
The end goal, says Carione, is to make it simpler for individuals who understand specific workflows to create applications on their own using QuickBase. They may choose to develop those applications in consultation with the internal IT organization, but by and large, most of the users of QuickBase want to be able to create those applications with the least amount of friction possible.
In general, Carione notes, most application development efforts that involve internal IT organizations result in a lot of back and forth. The end users know the process that needs to be automated and IT knows how to write the code. QuickBase Sync for CSV eliminates that inherently inefficient approach to developing applications by putting development tools into the hands of end users who don’t have to have coding expertise.
Longer term, Carione says, Intuit is looking at technologies such as the OData application programming interface (API) framework to extend the reach of its QuickBase Sync initiative even further.
Obviously, Intuit is not the only provider of development tools trying to empower citizen developers. But as a provider of a QuickBase database that is already widely deployed, it clearly has the inside track when it comes to getting those tools into the hands of end users.
