Marisol RamirezMay 13, 2013BUS 550

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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

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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

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User Contribution System Active (direct) and

Passive Main

characteristic: They convert information from users into a system that is useful to others

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Soure: Intuit Case Study

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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

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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 Preparation done in an interview-like process

with questions with Decision Tree process based on the answers

Main Weakness of TurboTax: It did not sufficiently answer users’ questions

while they were preparing their taxes Some Solutions

1. FAQ2. Commercial Search Engine

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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

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Challenges & Decisions Market Research

Groups of users to experiment Studies failed: users had already filed taxes and

received returns therefore did not feel the need to use the Q & A

Decision to keep going or not 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 )

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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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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”

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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 growth1. Participation driven innovation2. No Borders3. Mobile Experience has won!4. 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

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

1. What was the main weakness of TurboTax?

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2. Which of the following is not a risk when employing a user contributions system?

Review Questions

a. User feedback can be biased and not accurate

b. Negative posts might influence further contributionc. Users might develop a relationship with the company

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Review Questions3. What was the impact of Live Community’s

success?I. All versions of TurboTax implemented Live Community

II. 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/technology/la-fi-tn-intuit-pioneer-delight-20130509,0,7874694.story?page=1&track=rss

http://www.taxalmanac.org/index.php/TaxAlmanac:About

https://ttlc.intuit.com/