Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.

Write up: Intuit Accountants Conference

24th Sep 2013
Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.

Intuit Accountants Conference – The Meet – 19 September 2013 in London. Reviewed by Emily Trant

Some time ago I signed up to go along to Intuit’s The Meet event for accountants in London.

Confession: I’m not an accountant. However, I spend a lot of time talking to accountants about small business finance. Plus we have two apps that connect to online accounting software so I was keen to go and hear what they had to say.

Here’s my review of the day

Intuit really demonstrated their commitment to the UK Market and pulled out all the stops. First they fed us. And fed us and fed us and fed us. It started with a hot breakfast, followed by coffee & biscuits, followed by a gorgeous buffet lunch, then more coffee & cakes, and finally rounded out with a drinks reception at the end of the day. Phew. Add to that their impressive keynote speaker and panel guests, a sprinkling of American accents imported for the event, and what looked like a large chunk of their UK product and commercial team and it was clear they were taking this very seriously.

I just can’t resist a mention of the nifty Parker pens that were sitting on the table. (I did spot people snaffling up any spare pens. Accountants, eh?) Not to mention the fun stickers that have gone down a treat back at the office.

They keynote speaker, Mark Wickersham, set an excellent tone to the whole event. His talk encouraged accountants to think differently. Nobody is buying your time, he told us. So stop selling it. Businesses are buying the solutions to their problems. Sell the solution and price it accordingly. Why do accountants still insist on cost plus pricing? Move on to value pricing!

This timely reminder for accountants to stop looking inwards and start thinking about what they’re selling to their clients was spot on.

The highlight, of course, was the grand reveal of the new QuickBooks Online. It really is a thing of beauty. Fast, slick, colourful and simple it looks like the kind of tool that business owners and accountants alike will delight in filling up with data just to see how the shiny dashboard changes. It was quick enough to load up on a tablet powered by 3G, way down on level minus four of the hotel. And it was easy enough for me, a non-accountant, to intuitively understand what to do.

Even better, Intuit revealed a continuous roadmap of improvements and genuinely wanted to listen to feedback and suggestions. You got the sense that they planned to go back to the office the next day and update their roadmap.

Most exciting of all, they’re building up their ecosystem of apps and integrations. This, for me, is the crux of it all.

But what about the accountants? What did they think?

Ah, this is the challenge when a technology crosses the chasm. The early adopters have already leapt across. They get it. They know why online, and therefore connected, is best for most of their clients. Then there are the skeptics. Why, they wonder, should we change? We like the fact that the desktop software is a single fee rather than recurring. We know it. We’ve heard rumours that the online product isn’t as feature rich. And finally you have the hardened doubters. Where is the data! They demand to know. I’ve heard your servers are in Russia. I don’t trust the internet. (Perhaps these folk ought to attend our Running Your Business in the Cloud event in October!)

Looking around I think you could roughly divide the room up into thirds. A third are in the first camp. They get why their clients benefit from being online and connected and they were just there to get to know the Intuit team, eat a bacon roll, and see the product roadmap. They had a good time.

A third were hardened doubters. They were a vocal bunch and seemed unable or unwilling to take on board the responses to their questions. No matter the answer they were not to be swayed. The hardened doubters, it seemed, had also come out for the bacon rolls.

And the final third? They started the day on the fence. A little bit skeptical but not wanting to be left behind. Harkening back to the keynote speech I sincerely hope they got the point.

Here is the point: It’s not about what you’re selling; it’s about what your clients are buying.

Let me tell you why your clients are buying the online version. It’s not because their data is in the cloud (frankly nobody cares) or that it looks fantastic. It’s maybe a little bit because it’s easy to use. But mainly it’s because it makes their lives easier, saves them time and money, and makes them more productive.

How does it do this? I confess I’m biased but I strongly believe it’s all about the apps and add-ons. When your accounting software is connected to your bank account, your inventory tracking system, your CRM software, your point of sale software and your email system then beautiful things happen. Eg when you make a sale your stock levels get updated in your accounts in real time. When you run an email campaign you can select the clients who haven’t purchased from you recently, or who owe you money, or, or, or, or. If you update a client record in your CRM it flows through to your accounts. You get the picture.

No more copy and paste. No more endless spreadsheets trying to figure out the impact of A on B. There’s an app for that.

And that is the crux of it all. Your accounts data becomes the core of how you run your business and a series of connected apps work together to make life so much easier, so much better.

The fact that your accountant no longer has to hassle you for monthly bank statements due to the bank feed, or that they can pull a report for you that’s 100% up to date at any time because your data is live and updating constantly is just a bonus.

Bravo to Intuit for launching the fantastic new QuickBooks Online. They get it. I can’t wait to connect our apps and help make magic happen for so many more business owners.

Tags:

You might also be interested in

Replies (0)

Please login or register to join the discussion.

There are currently no replies, be the first to post a reply.