May 3, 2005 4:00 AM PDT
Newsmaker: For Intuit, 'unanswered prayers' spell success
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faster that year than it did the prior year. By being more focused on the customer, delivering breakthrough superior solutions, you can beat any merely acceptable competitor, particularly if you're already established as a company.
At one time you would send folks into retail stores, watching people as they bought the product, and then ask to let them go home and watch how they install the product?
Cook: It's great for dating. [Laughs.] Actually, we still do that. We had 65 employees from our TurboTax division watch over 100 customers do their taxes a year ago. From that came immense insights and immense mind-set changes on the part of our people. They could see things they had never imagined. That led to the process changes that produced the new TurboTax.
How do you convince customers to allow perfect strangers into their homes?
Cook: You don't get a 100 percent saying yes. Half the people say no.
Still, that's quite a high percentage.
Cook: But when they know you are from Intuit, there's a matter of trust there. I think that when you are watching a customer work, that's where the learning comes in.
And how long does it take to incorporate that data into some central repository and turn that into actionable items to fix the process?
Cook: As short as a day because it's not data in a repository. It's the effect on people's minds. You want the engineers, you want the product managers, the people whose hands craft the product watching the customers. Then it happens in a day. They come back to the office, they sit and say, "The key is based on what we just saw. We've got to do this; let's try that; let's do it this way"--and then we'll take it out for another round of user testing.
That's that cultural aspect that allows people to tap into their creativity, then take some directions to produce entrepreneurial success. We want to produce entrepreneurs inside the company--successful entrepreneurs. We can really help them improve their batting average.
They can feel their own skills growing: "I know how to do things now that I didn't know how to do six months earlier. You're making me a better engineer. You're making me a better programmer, making me a better architect, making me a better project manager." Those are the people who are inventing, the team behind QuickBooks Simple Start.
We now have the best-selling point-of-sale system in the country for small retailers. That all came out of the small-team junior product manager, who discovered things about customers that were totally against what we had been thinking.
Were there any steps along the way where you thought you would have been better-off had you chosen path B rather than path A?
Cook: Oh, there are lots of mistakes I've made. There are lots of things I regret doing or not doing. Do you have another hour or two or three to hear them all?
Mmm, I'd love to, but no time. So the takeaway question: Do you think Intuit would have been better-off, had the government allowed Microsoft to buy you?
Cook: You can't know what the other path would have led to. Initially, I was disappointed when the deal didn't go through. But then I was reminded of the lyrics from a Garth Brooks song. He sings a ballad about running into a girl at an alumni gathering from his high school and how he remembers back then praying, "Oh dear God! Let her fall in love with me, and I'll be happy ever after." Well, it didn't happen, and he realizes now, having seen her, what a mistake that would have been as he looks at his wife and his kids. And the refrain in the song is, "Thank God for unanswered prayers."
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While I USED to like thier software, they have joined the
bandwagon of products that expire. Quicken 2002 no longer
accepts data from my bank. Why? to force me into purchasing a
newer copy of Quicken. You'd never buy a car that only lasted
for a few years... you wouldn't buy ANYTHNG if you knew that it
had a very limited lifespan.
Quicken has become so much BLOAT, that MS just as soon own
it. Quickbooks for Mac is such a disaster, and has been for
years.
I think Intuit USED to be good, now they are at the top of my
"Greed Creed" list.
couldn't be happier. Sure, Quicken could use some optimizations,
but what program couldn't? As for the upgrading, one reason for it
is that standards change and banks change. What I mean is, banks
over the years adjust and change how they deliver your data online.
As a result, the products that receive that data must change and
adapt and upgrades are necessary. Overall, if I only have to spend
$30-60 every couple of years, I'm not going complain. They are
solid products and I couldn't be happier for their success.
several times over the years to get one or two
new features. With each upgrade, however, the
product became progressively less convenient and
cluttered. Soon there were mountains of useless
financial advice, the quality of explanations of
certain tax issues became less clearly written,
there were inexplicable dependencies on the
Internet for useless content, etc. All-in-all,
the product simply became more fluff than
function and they lost me as a customer.
For many people, it was the only reason to stick
with Windows. Certainly, it's why we still had a
Windows system image even up until about 18
months ago at the house. Despite it's
popularity, I think it's losing its way and
becoming too complacent. Remove the glitz, boost
the productivity, and port it to Linux / make it
cross-platform; improve the reconciliation
process, start providing decent accounting
services to complement the software, maybe even
work with cash register makers to add a
universal receipt barcode so that I can wave my
receipts past a computer and have them
automagically entered and categorized...
But alas, they are just Intuit...
I would expect to be able to drive my car for more than 2 years. If you bought a car, would you expect it to run forever with out up keep? Financial software is dependent upon changing criteria and up keep is required. Perhaps you should try out some share ware instead of professional software known for its accuracy.
I admire his sense of ethic, the courage he showed while taking the risk to build his business and the amount of work it took him and his team to build Intuit the way it is today. I believe that his constant focus on following his moral values and hope to make a difference in people's life is at the core of Intuit success.
I hope we will be able to follow the same path at SQLFusion, LLC. He is the best example to follow.
- intuit's scott cook
- by May 7, 2005 10:08 PM PDT
- Intuit is a dirty company in regards to it's Canadian Macintosh
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(8 Comments)customers. Intuit buys it's competitor MYOB in Canada, then
provides lousy support. Intuit produces Quickbooks for Mac and
then kills it, Quicken & quicktax a year later for the Mac. It will be a
great day when Simply Accounting comes back to Mac and Intuit
dies. One can only hope.