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Intuit: 'SME software market is wide open'

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25th Dec 2005
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Even though it is now dominated by three main players, the UK market for desktop accountancy software is still wide open, according to Intuit's country manager.

Last week, Intuit announced the imminent launch of QuickBooks Customer Manager, a lower cost rival to applications such as Microsoft CRM and Sage's ACT!.

While Microsoft Business Solutions is more focused on mid-tier corporations than small businesses, Sage and Intuit run the accounts software on the PCs of most of Britain's SMEs. Australian developer MYOB comes a distant third.

Typically, as software markets mature, they consolidate into the hands of just a few vendors. The applications themselves get harder to tell apart, as the development teams race each other to introduce new features or copy successful developments by their rivals.

The Sage-Intuit-MYOB line-up suggests these processes are well underway in the UK, where Sage and Intuit are now mirroring each other's marketing strategies. In recent months, for example, Intuit has rolled out QuickBooks applications for construction, property, retail and non-profit organisations, while Sage, too, has been "going vertical" for the past couple of years.

Intuit also launched QuickBooks SimpleStart as a rival to Sage Instant and added a forecasting tool to QuickBooks 2004 to challenge the supremacy of Sage Winforecast.

However, Intuit UK managing director Stephen Lee insisted, "We're not trying to confront Sage on each of these battlefronts."

He told AccountingWEB: "Most of these products do not happen in a few days. Our vertical solutions have been in development for two years or more - prior to Sage's announcements.

"As far as we see it, this isn't a saturated market. Only about a third of SMEs that could benefit from accounting software are using it."

According to Lee, there are more than 2m UK SME companies to play for in the business software market. The big issue for suppliers is to get these companies to use any kind of business software.

Both the QuickBooks SimpleStart and Customer Manager applications were deliberately stripped down to the basics, Lee said, as Intuit's market research suggested potential users found existing packages too complex.

"When you have a saturated market and a small number of new customers, you would look at what other companies are developing and match it, while providing some point of differentiation. Our view at Intuit is that we will be more successful if we work out what SMEs' needs are and work to meet those needs," Lee said.

"Sage is presumably doing the same thing."

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