Marisol Ramirez
May 13, 2013
BUS 550
2
Beginnings of Intuit
 Since
1983- Founder: Scott Cook
 Began with software for personal finance
management- Quicken
 1992- QuickBooks
 1993 IPO

Acquired ChipSoft, maker of TurboTax
 Always
looking to make personal tasks
easier and quicker
3
Intuit’s Business Units
 Small
Business Group
 Tax
 Financial
Services
 Other Businesses
 Revenue is cyclical due to their type of
service

QuickBooks and TurboTax make up almost
50% of revenue
4
User Contribution System
 Active
(direct) and
Passive
 Main characteristic:
They convert
information from
users into a system
that is useful to
others
5
Soure: Intuit Case Study
6
User Contribution Systems cont.


They can employ user feedback as well as
having professionals regulate or refine the
answers
Why should companies use this



Can help in product development and is always
being updated
Frees companies of the responsibility of
providing content to the users
Risks


User feedback may not be accurate or may be
biased
Should companies be inclusionist or delitionist

Negative feedback
7
First Try: Tax Almanac


2005- Cook expressed idea of a user
generated system which would add value to
Intuit
Tax Almanac- solving the tax professionals
problem of getting answers to obscure
questions




Forum for tax professional to discuss tax laws
By 2010 had 1.98 mill unique visitor and over
170,000 pages of discussion
Yet, Intuit did not find a way to monetize so they
went back to the drawing board
Zipingo also in 2005 – for use with Quicken
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Focus on Turbo Tax

Tax preparation product for users to file their
own tax return


Main Weakness of TurboTax:


Preparation done in an interview-like process
with questions with Decision Tree process based
on the answers
It did not sufficiently answer users’ questions
while they were preparing their taxes
Some Solutions
1.
2.
FAQ
Commercial Search Engine
9
C.I.A. aka Live Community


2006- Collective Intelligence Agent
Question and Answer format between users
(non-professionals)


Tested idea by implementing it in one of the
TurboTax branches
Feedback within Intuit


Tax professionals working for Intuit were skeptic
Prior market research showed users of Tax
software would not trust non-tax experts
10
11
Challenges & Decisions

Market Research

Groups of users to experiment


Decision to keep going or not



Studies failed: users had already filed taxes and
received returns therefore did not feel the need
to use the Q & A
Cook believed in the concept but was uneasy
about application
Brad Henske, TurboTax General Manager saw
cost effectiveness of this application
Test idea with the Online Home and Business
TurboTax (small portion but still in the 100,000’s
of units )
12
Launch of Live Community
 January
2007 – Live Community Launched
 Contributors not only users but tax
professionals as well
 New problem: Surplus of answers

Solution: increase in servers
 Questions,
Questions, and more Questions!
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14
Impact of Live Community
 Intuit
confirming Behavior is what is
necessary to measure consumer reaction
to products
 Also, the need to slowly immerse a
consumer into the product
 “Market Research is very good at
exposing problems with a product but not
good at testing solutions”
15
Impact of Live Community cont.
 By
2009-Live Community expanded to all
TurboTax versions
 The rest of the business units at Intuit were not
as excited to create their own L.C.

Until 2008 version of L.C. made for QuickBooks
 Launch
of more services based upon user
contribution like:



Small business hiring
QuickReceipts
Accountant Work Exchange
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Intuit: Now



“We seek to be a premier innovative growth
company that improves our customers’ financial
lives so profoundly they can’t imagine going back
to the old way.”
Not only online feedback, now personally noting
the take home experience
Smith, CEO identifies events in the Market which
offer opportunity for growth
1.
2.
3.
4.
Participation driven innovation
No Borders
Mobile Experience has won!
Data
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Discussion



Intuit’s path to a
successful
product
How does this
differ from other
measures of
product success?
How does this tie
back to the user
contribution
systems?
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Review Questions
1.
What was the main weakness of
TurboTax?
a.
There were not enough users who bought the paid
version
b.
It did not sufficiently answer users’ questions while
they were preparing their taxes
c. The users had difficulty navigating through the software
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Review Questions
2.
Which of the following is not a risk when
employing a user contributions system?
a.
User feedback can be biased and not accurate
b.
Negative posts might influence further contribution
c.
Users might develop a relationship with the company
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Review Questions
3.
I.
II.
What was the impact of Live Community’s
success?
All versions of TurboTax implemented Live Community
Allowed Intuit to realize the flaws of Market Research
III. The other business units adopted the idea
a. I only
b. I & II
c. II only
d. I,II, & III
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References
 http://www.intuit.com/
 http://network.intuit.com/
 http://www.latimes.com/business/technol
ogy/la-fi-tn-intuit-pioneer-delight20130509,0,7874694.story?page=1&track=r
ss
 http://www.taxalmanac.org/index.php/T
axAlmanac:About
 https://ttlc.intuit.com/