Case Study: Cambridge Innovation Center achieves $200K in development savings and 400% faster invoicing with Quickbase

Think-Tank Residency Opens Its Doors to Property Management Efficiency with QuickBase

Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) is a Boston-based flexible office provider for technology, life sciences and professional services firms, housing 175 companies with a 25-person staff. As CIC grew from a few dozen tenants to hundreds, its Excel-and–sticky-note system for tracking contacts, service requests, contracts and billing became unmanageable: no workflow, no real-time reporting, manual invoice generation in QuickBooks took two employees a week, and the business was vulnerable to disruptions.

CIC replaced spreadsheets with a web-based QuickBase application Rowe built himself, adding automated email alerts, tenant self‑service, and QuickBase–QuickBooks integration to auto-generate invoices; staff could also modify the app directly and access it remotely during a building evacuation. The change saved about $200,000 in development costs, cut invoice generation time by 400% (to one person in a day), saved roughly $25,000/year in staff time, and allowed CIC to continue operations through a multi-week evacuation while retaining nearly all tenant business.

Cambridge Innovation Center

Tim Rowe

Co-founder & CEO, Cambridge Innovation Center