IDN Blog

Netflix..thoughts on rapid iteration and experimentation

Intuit employees recently had an opportunity to hear from Reed Hastings of Netflix about how designing software has changed as SaaS has evolved.

Netflix is a great example of a company that lives for testing, experimentation, and improvement.  He started off his presentation talking about how in packaged software we focused on big-bang releases and because of that model we needed the geniuses who knew how to create great products.  We still see that in movies or fashion or other industries where the releases are big investment = big payoff.  Steve Jobs is our industry’s genius and physical products still operate in a big-bang release model.

With the advent of SaaS there is the opportunity to have multiple people with great, intuitive, artistic ideas deciding what we should do with the product.  Let them try out their ideas, and we can watch what happens – we can let the data decide.  Not only does this take some of the emotion out of making these decisions, it also allows people to see and learn what works and doesn’t - both from their own ideas and others.

What is exciting for us is that the QuickBase Developer Platform is a great resource for rapid iteration and experimentation not just by us, but by all of our customers and partners.  Pace of change is a huge advantage in innovation.  If I can try things at a very low cost, then why would I conduct long, theoretical research studies and produce huge design documents?  The ability to experiment and learn in the real world at low cost enables us to set product teams free.  In this case, we can set thousands of developers free in the market.

What we’ve created is an engine for innovation.  We have already seen some of the fruits of this based on the exciting applications that developers have been building.  We can’t wait until this stuff gets in the market. Come join us and be a part of the experiment.

Web 2.0 Recap

Had a great time at Web 2.0 last month!  The team met lots of enthusiastic customers and developers interested in learning more about our new Platform offering.  We showed off some early demo’s of developer apps and got plenty of ooh’s and ahh’s.  Here are a few random thoughts from the show:

1) Platform’s for developers are all the buzz and we’re right in the middle of it.  In the very first session I attended Wednesday morning about Enterprise Mashups, QuickBase was mentioned twice in the first 45 mins.  This came less than a week after our Platform Announcement.  Very exciting!

2) Everyone’s thinking about how to sell to Enterprises but no one’s having much success.  There seemed to be a half a dozen “social network for enterprise” startups and a bunch of other business platforms for enterprises and none of them had any significant customer growth.  I felt very good about our strategy and progress in selling QuickBase throughout the Enterprise.

3) There was no “wow” booth that was a “must-see.”  Definitely some interesting companies and cool technology, but nothing stood out as “awesome!” (QuickBase excluded of course!)  This says to me that the technology out there is pretty darn good – and now it’s about business models and customers – Who can capitalize best on the technology at hand and build a big business?  This is a good place for us to be!

4) Working a booth for three days is hard work!  I was lucky enough to get to wander the conference and do press, but our team that stood in the booth all day and did demos and presentations worked their buns off!  Kudos to them!

5) The economy is on everyone’s mind.  Marc Andreessen said it best in his Keynote…Paraphrasing: Startups don’t take on lots of debt so that’s good, but the Internet is so tied in to every part of the economy now, a downturn can have a big impact.

6) Mobile is HOT HOT HOT, but way too fragmented to be a short-term win right now.  It’s still very early in its evolution (especially in the U.S.)

7) Lastly, it felt to me like the end of “Web 2.0”.  I’m not sure exactly what that means, but it felt like we are about to hit a new cycle of startup consolidation/implosion, followed by real businesses being created with real revenues, followed by a new “something” (technology, business model, Web 3.0?).  Not sure how else to explain this feeling, but I think it’s a good feeling.  It keeps us moving, innovating,  and honest (i.e. building real value).

Peter's View on the QuickBase Developer Program

I've been at Intuit for nearly 6 years now, and as a distinct rarity at Intuit, I've been in the same group the whole time I've been here -- the Intuit Developer Network is what brought me to Intuit in the first place (I was a developer in the network before I joined Intuit) and I've got to say what we've done with the QuickBase Developer Program is the most exciting thing I've worked on here at Intuit, and possibly in my whole career (though the MPact Media Processor and Convex's SuperComputers were pretty exciting as well). 

In fact, as I look back on where I was having the most fun in my work, it's always been about bringing big things to a broader audience.  Convex's niche was in delivering the power of a supercomputer like a Cray, previously available only to huge enterprise or research institution budgets, within reach of an individual department -- delivering 1/2-1/4 the performance of a cray at 1/10th the price.  The MPact Media processor brought the power of high-end video, audio, and modem capabilities, which, at the time, cost $1000+ to add to an already expensive PC into a single chip on a single board costing less than $200. 

Now, with the QuickBase development program we're bringing the power of SaaS application development -- previously available only to people who could afford to rent hosting at a co-location facility, hire 24/7 operations staff and build server AND client side code, and implement a billing and entitlement system to control access to their product -- to any developer who's got a good idea and a little time to implement it.

I'm thrilled with the possibilities, and I'm jazzed by the buzz in the blogs.

Peter+

What people are saying about the QuickBase Developer Program

In preparation for next week's Web 2.0 conference, IDN and the QuickBase team pre-announced the QuickBase Developer Program today to some of the industry's most influential bloggers, and they have taken note.

Please take a look at these posts, and we will do our best to keep this page up to date.

Fear and enterprise in the PaaS channel by ZDNet's Phil Wainewright -- Rather than letting the advent of SaaS and PaaS wipe them out, many solution providers are eager to find ways of embracing the opportunity these new business models present.

Intuit enters the PaaS wars by ZDNet's Phil Wainewright -- What Salesforce.com and WebEx have always talked about doing with their PaaS platforms, Intuit is now doing with QuickBase -- and with a much bigger developer ecosystem.

Intuit opens its QuickBase platform to developers; Plans to get SaaSy by ZDNet's Larry Dignan -- Intuit on Thursday will open its QuickBase platform to third party developers with the aim of creating a software as a service business that will launch this summer. QuickBase is a Web tool used by half of the Fortune 100 to collaborate, manage projects and customer data. Typically, QuickBase is used in divisions within larger companies, [...]

When thinking PaaS, think about it in terms of audience by ZDNet's Larry Dignan -- Software as a service has turned into platform as a service (as if we needed another “aaS”) and as this application battle royale gets underway developers need to think about these efforts in terms of audience. For instance, Bill Appleton, CTO of DreamFactory, which makes cloudware–rich Internet applications that are built to run on outsourced platforms [...]

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/16/watch-out-salesforce-intuit-opens-up-quickbase-to-developers/trackback/

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2008/04/16/intuits-radical-new-flex-quickbase-cloud-platform/trackback/

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2008/04/17/get-ready-for-the-affinity-platforms/trackback/

http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9920571-2.html

http://diversity.net.nz/paas-from-a-bookkeeping-app-think-beachheads/2008/04/17/

http://www.coffeeforclosers.org/?p=89

http://blog.jamesurquhart.com/2008/04/intuit-makes-play-for-finances-in-cloud.html

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWym82WKX18&feature=user

Podcast:

http://redmonk.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=333829

To learn more about the program, view video of the platform in action, and apply to be a part of the closed beta, please visit: http://developer.intuit.com/technical_resources/QuickBase/

Best,

IDN

Last summer's Solutions Marketplace usability testing results

Oringal Entry date, Summer 2007 - Stay tuned for even more changes

We have had the opportunity to test the New Solutions Marketplace with customers this week in our usability labs. We have gotten so much great feedback - it really demonstrates the importance of letting your customers tell you what they want.

Here are a few of the consistent pieces of feedback that we will be working on in the next few weeks.

    1. The navigation drop downs are tough for people to understand at first, so we will be working to simplify that and make it easy to find what you need.

    2. It is very difficult to find the Solutions Marketplace from Google, Intuit.com and QuickBooks.com

    3. Once a customer finds an application that might fit their needs, they want simple bullet points of information, and information about how the solution works with QuickBooks - what does the solution do that QuickBooks does not do?

    4. Customers love to see demos (but they must be brief and to the

point) , and they really prefer to do their owns research before calling/emailing someone to learn more. Having prices on the web site is absolutely critical. If you say Special Pricing, you might as well say very very expensive!

    5. People rely heavily on search, but they do not even look at the "Best Bets" results or any sponsored ads as they have been conditioned to think they are less valuable "noise".

Finally, and most importantly, everyone who visits the site wants it to work just for them. An accountant thinks that the Accountant page ought to be the home page.  A contractor loves the image of the builder on the home page, and things that the entire site must be for builders. And, I know that this is true for me. I want everything I purchase or use to be right for me. When I go to the store, I want my products to be on the shelf in front of me. So, that is the challenge that we must all continue to strive to solve - how do we make our services and offerings Right for each and every one of our customers.

One developer who has done a good job with the content that they supply on the Solutions Marketplace is PaperSave. The name of the product is descriptive. The copy on the page is concise and clear. See more at http://marketplace.intuit.com/AppID-2893-Overview.aspx

We appreciate any and all feedback and comments on the blog, the site or anything you have to share about web site best practices.

Shannon Adkins

Group Manager, IDN

NFWYLF = Not finding what you are looking for?

Many of you know that we have launched a new feature on the Solutions Marketplace -the "Not Finding What You Are Looking For?" form. We are receiving about 10-15 inquiries a day, and trying to keep up!

We will post to his blog on a weekly basis about the needs our customers are sharing, and the types of solutions customers are looking for. Please feel free to use this data to make a decision about the types of applications you might want to build for the future. Check back here weekly for transcripts of the customers entries and requests.

A few that we have seen on a frequent basis include the following:

• Equipment rental applications
• Stock/investment management applications integrated to QuickBooks
• Medical Billing software

Thanks for continuing to build great products that integrate with QuickBooks!

Shannon Adkins
Group Manager, IDN

SaaS, and what it means for IDN ISV's

I just had a conversation with one of our Gold developers urging them to move quickly toward developing their application as a web-based application and entering the Software-As-A-Service domain. Like most of our IDN developers, they are 100% focused on meeting the needs of their current prospective customers, so they asked a very smart question. How many of your QuickBooks customers really want SaaS applications?

I happen to have the answer to that based upon our most recent end-user survey, so I will share that with you all now. 12% of our customers surveyed consider web -based software either "critical" or "nice to have". A remaining 45% of our customers are neutral. Approximately 25% will not use web based software.

We have additional data that helps us focus in on the types of applications that our customers plan to use as web-based software. Feel free to use this information to inform your own decision about entering the SaaS world.

	Currently Use		Plan to Use
	Total	Web-based	Total	Web-based
Accounting	60%	14%	51%	19%
Billing and Invoicing	48%	15%	42%	20%
Payroll Management	26%	16%	25%	23%
Data integration & Reporting	19%	20%	18%	28%
Business Management	16%	16%	16%	21%
PDA/Wireless	16%	31%	17%	33%
Document & Image Management	15%	25%	16%	31%
Estimating and bidding	14%	17%	16%	20%
Job Costing	13%	18%	16%	23%
Job Tracking	12%	21%	14%	24%
Time & Project Tracking	11%	26%	15%	30%
Inventory and Order Management	11%	19%	14%	27%
POS (point of sale)	8%	9%	11%	20%
CRM & Sales Force Automation	8%	29%	11%	36%
Shipping	8%	40%	11%	42%
Labels & Bar Codes	7%	22%	12%	26%
Ecommerce	6%	38%	10%	41%
Property Management	5%	18%	8%	24%
Resource & Staff Management	4%	40%	5%	38%
EDI- Electronic Data Interchange	4%	33%	6%	31%
Nonprofit/Donor Management	4%	17%	6%	15%
Service Scheduling/Management	3%	29%	6%	31%
Real Estate Management	2%	31%	5%	31%
Field Service	2%	22%	4%	28%
ERP/Shop Floor Management	1%	40%	3%	17%

One point of view that we have shared around IDN is the notion that customers expect SaaS application to cost less, and are interested in the ability to "add" an application to their work-flow with low risk, low costs and high usability. For many of the traditional ISV's that are a part of IDN, this will mean creating a smaller, simpler application, and thinking about free offers as an entry point. IDN will be working diligently over the coming months to help our developers along this path, with both technical tools, and business and marketing resources.

So, come along with us as we move to Web 2.0 and SaaS applications. It is going to be a wild ride.

Shannon Adkins
Group Manager, IDN

New IDN Leader

Peter Vogel Takes on a New Role in IDN

IDN's very own AlphaGeek has new and bigger responsibilities within IDN. As of March, Peter was appointed the Interim Leader for IDN.

As Peter looks ahead to his new role, he has two major goals for the coming year.

• First is to drive alignment of business interests between our community of developers and the Intuit small business ecosystem. What's important to both developers and Intuit is growth in business. We want to continue delivering great products to new and existing customers.

• Second, Intuit and our developers have a huge opportunity to make an impact with products and services delivered via the web, and many of our developers are actually ahead of us on this. However, many more need to get their products (or features of their products) to the web. Intuit and IDN can uniquely bring to the table not only great products and services via the web, but a connected ecosystem of products and services that work from the desktop to the web, in hybrid combinations, and on mobile devices.

In addition, Peter will continue to oversee the SDK technologies. With his strong technology team, he will ensure that developers continue to get the technology, service and support they need to succeed.

Congrats to Peter in his new role!

Exhibit at the Sleeter Group's ASCC Conference

The The Sleeter Group's 5th annual Accounting Software Consulting Conference will be held on November 10-13, 2008 in a new location this year: Phoenix, Arizona!

In 2007, over 600 CPAs, accountants, bookkeepers, accounting industry leaders (plus 180 exhibitor attendees) participated in the conference. Each of the last 4 years they have seen at least a 20% growth in attendance and expect similar growth in 2008!

Accountants, CPAs, and bookkeepers are an excellent channel to customers and net promoter of third party add-ons.  They are strong Influencers in the QuickBooks community!

Sign up for the Sleeter Group's Accounting Software Consulting Conference today!

  Please note: In 2007 both Gold and Silver levels were sold out within one week, and the Bronze level was sold out in less than one month. Booth location choices are on a first come first serve basis.