Forum Discussion

DavidJung's avatar
DavidJung
Qrew Assistant Captain
8 months ago

Using QB for CPQ app?

I've been using QB for ten years for our company's quoting system. We're at a point where we need to decide about upgrading to a CPQ (configure/price/quote) app, for accuracy and integration with our ERP. I searched this form and exactly one reference to CPQ. My experience with QB imagines all things are possible, but CPQ can be complex and I'm not sure if buiding something from scratch is the right answer.

Specifically on my mind, as a builder, I am not experienced in making rules that a configurator would require, where the conflict of daughter items is resolved (can't buy tinting if a window isn't included). I have a few times I've done something like that, but feels like a work-around, and would be core to CPQ. Especially when the user changes their mind about which items they want.

Anyway, just looking for some feedback, from the community about this, thanks.



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David Jung
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5 Replies

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  • MarkShnier__You's avatar
    MarkShnier__You
    Qrew Champion
    8 months ago

    Well let me weigh in with a random opinion. I have been working with Quickbase first as a kind of power user when I was a manager and then after we sold our family business as a developer, in all since 2002. so 20+ years.  I have worked with I imagine more than 100 clients and countless apps. And all I can say is when you get into the intricacies of building an app with crazy business rules, there's always a way to do it with QuickBase one way or the other.  

    The famous Quickbase sales engineer Kirk Trachy, now retired had a great expression. "If you can say it, we can do it."   And what he meant by that is if you can clearly enunciate in words, the business rule or the formula or the restriction that you are trying to implement then we can do it. The challenge often becomes being crystal clear about what the requirement is.   

    We have so many tools now at our disposal compared to the early days. Pipelines, formula queries, URL Formula buttons and regular old relationships.

    So for example if I was to guess what you meant about your original question, if we are building an order and it has Child Line items the order can easily detect through very conventional summary fields whether or not there are any child items in category windows.  That would allow us to control whether or not we will let you add another child item as tinting.  Simply be a form rule which blocks the safe and put up a message to the user. "Cannnot I add tinting because no windows yet".    

     



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    Mark Shnier (Your Quickbase Coach)
    mark.shnier@gmail.com
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    • ChayceDuncan's avatar
      ChayceDuncan
      Qrew Captain
      8 months ago

      I would echo some of Marks comments and add that of any time it would probably be now with the capabilities of both pipelines and formula queries. In my opinion if you start off with a well defined catalog / template where your rules are in place via relationships of what items are 'suggested' or required to go with what, when it comes time to apply that to an actual quote, you can leverage a lot of these tools to (1) use summaries/formula queries against the template to determine if you've got everything you need or (2) leverage those same things to just create/fill in the gaps for the end user. 

      My suggestion would be to figure out how you would build the configuration template the rules that will apply in each type of circumstance and then engineer that in a way that when you actually apply it to a quote then it should easily fall into place. The legwork would be getting all of those configuration pieces ready to go. 



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      Chayce Duncan
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      • DavidJung's avatar
        DavidJung
        Qrew Assistant Captain
        8 months ago

        Chayce--

        OOOH, Formula queries. API calls from within QB! Haven't used them, but that seems to be the answer I needed about how to do this. I was thinking I would need a stand-alone page to do API calls and rely on their results. If I can do it natively from within QB, that opens up this project. Thank you!

        AND I can get ChatGPT to write queries for me. I've already had success with that with an external app. Awesome.

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        David Jung
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    • DavidJung's avatar
      DavidJung
      Qrew Assistant Captain
      8 months ago

      Mark--

      Thanks for your reply. I've had a QB account almost as long as you. As we went from tables to apps, the database has certainly grown with our needs. I think I could make QB stand up on its ear, if I wanted. Many times I've felt cautious making it do things, then come back and just go ahead and go all in where it just feels extremely contrived, yet powerful. And here I am questioning if I should go the next level. I need to bring in engineering and IT and have them learn how to do things, and these tricks (like summary fields) as regular functions. 

      Funny you should mention that Kirk quote, that now applies to ChatGPT. And if I were to build a coded front end to do the configuring, I would do just that with ChatGPT. 

      As I reply, I'm thinking maybe I just need to do a test app, focus on the daughter-table and sister-item relationships to see if I can manage them to meet our needs. I've never really generated daughter items dynamically, maybe that is something that will help learn the answer.



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      David Jung
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  • DavidHyde's avatar
    DavidHyde
    Qrew Member
    8 months ago

    David,

    I've created several inventory and estimating forms for our business. Managing all the fields and actions can be a bit tricky, but once you get the hang of it, they work really well.The trick is always to build for scale.  I've learned how to do this on my own, mostly through trial and error.

    If you're already using Quickbase, it's convenient to have everything in one place, in a familiar environment. However, I wouldn't recommend it for beginners unless your system is super simple and won't change much or often.

    In my experience, formulas tend to be more dependable than form rules. Both have their uses, but I've found that formulas consistently give better results.

    I hope this information is helpful!



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    David Hyde | Director of Technology, Systems Dev. and Data Analytics
    BWW, Inc. dba SERVPRO® Team Wilson
    Locations in Birmingham, AL | Dallas, TX | Houston, TX
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