Running head: INTUIT CASE STUDY

Intuit Case Study University of Phoenix Business Systems Development II BSA/400

INTUIT CASE STUDY Intuit Case Study 3.0 INTUIT Case Study

Scott Cook was responsible for making the University of Southern California ski team the largest and most successful ski team in the entire state of California. He accomplished this by speaking with the most successful ski club leaders for other colleges in his state. Using their best practices, he made the ski club at USC the largest student organization on campus. (Schroder & Taylor, 2003, p. 4) Ideas that are so simple can sometimes be lost in all of the clutter that accompanies running a business. The idea of a successful business is to find the customers need and meet it. The ideas for Quicken, Intuits first product, came from Cook listening to his wife complain about paying bills and how tedious it was. This type of customer driven product development characterizes both Cooks philosophy on business and how Intuit researches and develops its products. 3.1 The Scientist or the Layman?

It is entirely possible that with a purchase of Quickbooks or other Intuit product you may have an Intuit employee follow you home. In fact, its the principle behind one of Intuits signature tactics for getting inside the heads of customers: dispatching employees to visit users at their homes or offices, or both, to watch them work. Such visits, called follow-me-homes in Intuit parlance, are central to the companys processes, both for developing new products and for learning how to improve old ones. (OBrien & Marakas, 2009, p. 509) This type of highly engaging customer feedback gathering is one of the most successful activities Intuit engages in. One of its chief competitors, Microsoft, takes a completely different approach.

INTUIT CASE STUDY To better understand the software needs of entrepreneurs, Microsoft has been undertaking detailed field studies of small firms all over the U.S. Its executives refer to this sort of qualitative research as "anthropology," a term that has become a popular buzzword at the company in recent years. In addition to the code jockeys and marketing mavens who dominate the upper reaches of the corporate hierarchy, Microsoft employs numerous social scientists, including two credentialed anthropologists, to work on projects such as the development of Office SBA. (Murphy, 2006) There are advantages and drawbacks to each of these methods. Taking a look at anthropology specifically there are several strengths. Microsoft does see benefits from its anthropological efforts. The approach used was to give businesses as much as $100,000 in Dell computers loaded with Microsoft software. The condition is that their on-staff anthropologists can come and observe the businesses use the software and gather feedback when they want. Anthropologists study people. They are trained to look at a culture and ask the right questions to gather insight says Kristina Thayne, an anthropology graduate of the University of Houston. An anthropologist can do a very good job of identifying how the culture of a company works. This type of information can be very important in driving knowledge and development.

This method is less effective than other methods for several reasons. Microsoft providing all of these free computers to small businesses reflects how poorly Microsoft understands small business culture compared with corporate culture. Incentivizing may be necessary to get things accomplished in the corporate world but small business culture is very different. Being a small business banker for several years, I have had the opportunity to deal with small business customers and managing their finances directly. It always strikes me how enthusiastically small business owners will discuss their businesses. While some people are guarded or may withhold

INTUIT CASE STUDY valuable knowledge, small business owners will gush about their dream if you give them the

opportunity. It doesnt require an anthropology degree to get small businesses to participate. It is tremendously easy if you ask the right questions and explain the benefits to them. Scientifically speaking, the fact that you are giving a culture the tools to use to work muddies the scientific waters. Any scientific study conducted out of this environment would need to be taken with a grain of salt. Businesses may be less likely to be critical of their benefactors and the software than they might be otherwise. Like most of Microsofts ideas, this one sounds a lot better in paper than it does in practice. Intuit does things a little differently, releasing their employees into the wilds of the small business world. Rick Jensen, who heads product development at Intuits tax product group, recalls one lightbulb experience at a customers home: She got a screen about charitable donations, which asked if they were cash or noncash. She said, I wrote a check, so it must be non-cash. Afterward, Intuit changed the language. (OBrien & Marakas, 2009, p. 510) Intuits method is superior for several reasons. As highlighted above, real observations of customers using software can generate great ideas and refinements that would be impossible for an employee to make without this key interaction. Helping to create something and then going out into the world to see how it is being used can be a transformational and rewarding experience for an employee. Customer interaction can utterly shake the foundation of how an employee views their place in the company and the importance of the job that they do every day and its impact. Taking the additional time to solve a sticky problem translates into a program being easier for a customer to pick up and use. This association isnt always made in isolation. Being a

INTUIT CASE STUDY customer focused company and not interacting with customers on different levels of the organization is a recipe for disaster. 3.2 Do You Love Tax Jargon?

I should have been an accountant, the director of a local funeral home that frequented our familys restaurant used to tell me. Death can only get you once, taxes get you every year. In 2009, 144,103,375 individual tax returns were filed in the United States. (Internal Revenue Service [IRS], 2010) Even a reasonably sized piece of this pie could be very profitable. Out of this large group of individual returns, about 13.8%, or 20 million, do not take advantage of the service of a professional tax preparer or software. (OBrien & Marakas, 2009) It is this group that Intuit is focusing its efforts on. TurboTax is successful because it takes the complicated process of tax preparation and condenses it into an easily digestible format than anyone can pick up and use. Watching someone do their taxes makes it easy to see where the greatest opportunities for improvement lie within the process. Intuit owns 79% of the market share for retail software tax preparation. (OBrien & Marakas, 2009) Clearly, their customer centered approach is leading Intuit to success in the areas it expands its business into. Many TurboTax users of the online product feel the product is as easy as going down to the local tax preparation company to have the taxes done. Similar tactics and questions are used. Like any process, there is a great deal that goes into taking a product from inception to launch. It is apparent that user focused research and implementation is a key ingredient in the recipe for success.

INTUIT CASE STUDY References

Internal Revenue Service. (2010). 2010 tax statistics. Retrieved from http://www.irs.gov/pub/irssoi/10taxstatscard.pdf Murphy, R. M. (2006, June 2006). GETTING TO KNOW YOU. Fortune Small Business, 16. OBrien, J. A., & Marakas, G. M. (2009). Management information systems (9th ed.). Retrieved from Schroder, K. K., & Taylor, S. E. (2003). Inside Intuit: How the makers of Quicken beat Microsoft and revolutionized an entire industry. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=lRs_4U43UcEC&lpg=PP1&ots=9a6pXR1jZo&dq=in side%20intuit&pg=PR4#v=onepage&q&f=false