Competitors claim that thriving companies outgrow QuickBooks, but Intuit sees the different levels of QuickBooks scaling to meet the needs of growing businesses. And, more features are in the works.
As the established leader in financial software for small and midsize businesses, QuickBooks has seen competitors come and go over the years. As software as a service moves into the mainstream, new competitors are emerging and QuickBooks continues evolving to the changing needs of customers. Recently, Angus Thomson, VP and general manager of Intuit's Mid-Market Group, discussed how QuickBooks is perceived, plans for future growth, and whether or not businesses want to move their financial data off-premise.
bMighty: Some of your competitors claim that companies "outgrow" QuickBooks. How do you respond?
Angus Thompson: We feel that the best option for companies outgrowing QuickBooks is, in fact, QuickBooks. We've continued to develop the product from the initial focus of empowering businesses with less than 10 employees to manage their accounting without any heaving lifting. About eight years ago, we recognized that some businesses were growing up and exceeding the capabilities of QuickBooks. That's when we began adding to the features in QuickBooks Pro and Premier that we now offer in QuickBooks Enterprise. We now have more than 300,000 users and 50,000 companies -- 39,000 of those moving from QuickBooks Pro and Premier -- on QuickBooks Enterprise. Of those, 11,000 made the switch from horizontal competitors such as Sage MAS 90 and Microsoft Dynamics GP, and vertical competitors such as Maxwell Systems.
bMighty: QuickBooks Enterprise may be a destination for QuickBook Pro and Premier customers, but does it have limits as well?
Thompson: We can't talk about our future offerings, but we do have plans to address the areas that are pain points for our customers; we're conscious of the limitations and we're moving to address them. For example, 38% of our users do one or more cross-border transactions per month, so expanding beyond single currency is top of mind for us. We're addressing other areas through partnerships. For instance, we've partnered with Velocity Inventory to provide inventory management functions, including lot tracking, bar codes, and multilocation inventory tracking.
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bMighty: We've talked about the limits, but what about the reasons that companies move to QuickBooks Enterprise from competitors?
Thompson: There are two main reasons companies come from other solutions to QuickBooks Enterprise. First, it's easy to use and, second, the total cost of ownership is low. Ease of use is by far the most important factor. QuickBooks is easy to use, it's easy to start using, it takes fewer people to operate, and that means more time to focus on growing the business. We've seen customers reduce staff dedicated to accounting functions after moving from competitors to QuickBooks Enterprise. Our typical install is a matter of days (a few weeks in the most complex scenarios). By contrast, some SaaS offerings can take several months to configure. Most of our customers have one part-time or a contract IT person to support QuickBooks Enterprise. There's no license cost. You do need an on-premise server, but the impact cost is minimal because it's such a simple product to install and use. That all translates to a lower total cost of ownership.
bMighty: You made the comparison to SaaS solutions. How have SaaS offerings changed the competitive landscape?
Thompson: Not needing to have a server on site is a positive for SaaS in one sense. However, many customers prefer to keep their financial information on-premise for security and peace of mind reasons. We're focused on a hybrid approach. We believe customers will want some functions, such as inventory, field services, vendors services, and business intelligence, in the cloud. That's because they just want the output of those functions and they want them to be available. With other functions, customers want the assurance of privacy and security that comes with keeping financial data on-site. Based on our customer survey, 44% of our customers won't consider a SaaS offering for their financials. We respect how our customers think. That's why our strategy is to provide a belt and suspenders approach of providing on-premise assurance with SaaS freedom.
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Benjamin Tomkins is editor of bMighty.com.
