Quicken, the legendary software that revolutionized personal finance
management, was invented at a kitchen table. Today, that same kitchen
table sits amid nearly two dozen of Intuit Inc.’s newest products and
experiments unveiled at the company’s latest Innovation Gallery Walk.
The display reflects Intuit’s ongoing commitment to innovation and its
unparalleled success in moving from a tabletop to the cloud.
While Intuit (Nasdaq: INTU) is no longer a startup, it retains that
startup mindset. And that mindset, combined with the ability to reinvent
and transform itself along the way, makes this innovative company with
more than $4 billion in annual revenue and 8,500 employees around the
world stand out in the technology industry.
Intuit spotlighted more than 20 of its latest innovations at its
Mountain View campus on Jan. 29, unveiling a glimpse into the future of
tax preparation, payments and healthcare. These products are the outcome
of purposeful innovation. They are the tangible outcome of the company’s
strategy that has fueled Intuit’s continued growth through dramatic
economic and technological changes.
That strategy has already paid off. As a result, Intuit has:
Doubled its customer base over the past five years, to 60 million.
Transformed its portfolio, with more than 45 million customers in the
cloud.
Generated more than $100 million in fiscal 2012 revenue from products
that didn’t exist three years ago.
Increased its number of patents by 10-fold over just five years ago.
Intuit’s approach to innovation has two core competencies that
differentiate the company and allow it to deliver solutions that truly
change people’s lives.
Customer-driven innovation, which is a mindset and methodology
to uncover important, unsolved problems.
Design for Delight, a process that helps create better ways to
deliver what’s most important to customers. This approach to
innovation creates an entrepreneurial environment where small teams
collaborate to delight customers and deliver awesome product
experiences.
“By giving our employees the freedom to experiment, we are able to bring
groundbreaking innovations that solve important customer problems to
market faster than ever,” said Brad Smith, Intuit president and chief
executive officer. “Our strong performance is boosted by the secular
tailwind that we're riding toward a connected services economy, backed
by continuous innovation and strong execution.”
What’s New at the Gallery Walk
An array of new products, others with expanded capabilities, and
experiments were announced at the Gallery Walk. These new offerings
illustrate the success of Intuit’s connected
services strategy, which is based on delivering awesome product
experiences, enabling the contributions of others, and harnessing the
power of data to create delight. These included:
New Products
TurboTax CPA Select
– Gives taxpayers a secure and convenient online tool to help them
review and select a qualified Certified Public Accountant from the
convenience of their home computer, tablet or smartphone. Consumers
and small businesses frustrated with the tax store experience of long
lines and uncertainty about the preparer’s qualifications, can select
a CPA to do their taxes based on qualifications, customer reviews and
practice areas, and know the final price they will pay for the service
before work begins.
Mint Home and Business – Simplifies financial management for
personal business owners who comingle personal and professional
spending and income. Expected to be available later this year, Mint
Home and Business makes it simple to manage finances and track
expenses in one place.
GoPatient– Provides a secure and easy way for patients to make
appointments, refill prescriptions, view lab results, access health
information, contact their doctor and pay their bill. Showcased by
Intuit Health, GoPatient is a mobile companion app for participating
doctors’ patient portals.
Products with Expanded Capabilities
GoPayment– Adds a
new optical character recognition scanning capability, letting small
businesses accept credit and debit card payments on a smartphone –
without swiping the plastic. Enables hassle-free, safe and secure
payments. The new system is available for download on iOS devices.
Generation Demandforce
– Provides customers of Intuit's Demandforce automated marketing and
communications tools with an online community that they can access
anytime, anywhere. This lets them connect and share unique insights
with thousands of other small business marketers.
QuickBooks Online–
Gives small businesses from Australia to Zimbabwe an easy way to
create localized invoices, pay bills and track expenses in their own
language. A just-released beta feature adds more than 40 languages to
the product, enabling more customers to use it in their home language.
Experiments
Mobile Money – Lets people pay for purchases by simply tapping
their phone against a merchant’s terminal. Using near-field
communications and the user’s mobile banking app, Mobile Money
automatically withdraws the purchase amount from the customer’s
account. Mobile Money is being tested by Intuit’s financial services
division that serves banks.
Data Connections – Looking ahead, Intuit is exploring new and
meaningful ways to create connections between its 60 million customers
and help them thrive. In the past year, more than 1.2 million Mint
users did business with nearly 70,000 QuickBooks
Online customers, resulting in 3.3 million transactions.
Additional Resources
Gallery
Walk recap, featuring video interviews with Intuit CEO Brad Smith,
Intuit Co-founder Scott Cook and Gallery Walk attendees.
Founded in 1983, Intuit had annual revenue of $4.15 billion in its
fiscal year 2012. The company has approximately 8,500 employees with
major offices in the United States,
Canada, the United
Kingdom, India and other
locations. More information can be found at www.intuit.com.
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