Techaisle Blog

Rapid fire announcements from Intuit, all directed towards the betterment of small businesses. Today Intuit announced the availability of Intuit Small Business Revenue Index, which is based on aggregated data from QuickBooks Online. By the very meaning of the term “aggregated” it should be understood that the data is anonymous, that is democratized across 200,000 small businesses. This index is the first of its kind in the market that provides current information on monthly small business revenue. It complements Intuit’s monthly Small Business Employment Index to provide a more complete picture of the economic health of US’s small businesses based on revenue, hiring and compensation trends.

With its latest announcement, Intuit has demonstrated that it is bringing data-driven insights to small businesses, sole-proprietors; insights that were previously only available to large enterprises. This information should empower small businesses to compare themselves against benchmarks and thereby effect changes in their organizations.

It certainly places in the hands of Intuit’s small business customers, power of the data. Both the Employment and Revenue Indexes are updated monthly by Intuit which is far more often than government stats and take a snapshot that is more targeted and pertinent to small business owners. They could use it as a signal for whether it’s time to hire, cut back or increase employee salaries.

As Techaisle had mentioned in its own press release on big data on April 26, 2012, data analytics is equally relevant for small businesses. 12 percent of small businesses using business intelligence are interested in big data analytics. However, they are looking for an IT vendor or partner to collect, collate, and analyze big data and present to these small businesses as a resource, in other words, democratization of big data. The collected data is an aggregation of information being created by other small businesses within the same vertical segment or employee size category. Intuit to my mind, just did it.

Timing by Intuit could not be more perfect.

Anurag Agrawal
Techaisle

Intuit today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase Demandforce for approximately US$423 million. Demandforce has been primarily focused on SMB segment offering products and services to help SMBs navigate and thrive in connected economy by automating their marketing and customer communications, building and maintaining a strong online reputation and raising their profile with their local consumers.

Speaking on the acquisition, Kiran Patel, EVP and General Manager, Intuit Small Business Group said, “Demandforce sits at the sweet spot of Intuit’s SMB customer base and is consistent with our goal to help our customers save time and make money.  With a compelling customer value proposition, SaaS model and high growth profile, Demandforce will provide opportunities to grow Intuit’s customer base and revenue per customer over time.”

Analyst Speak

Intuit is continuing to build its capabilities in cloud application areas focused on alleviating the pain points of small businesses. Based on surveys conducted by Techaisle over the last 3 years, improving sales and marketing has shown up consistently as the top business pain point of small businesses. Moreover small businesses are increasingly struggling to grow their revenues, retaining and positively connecting with their customers in a virtual world. Techaisle survey data shows that nearly 45 percent of small businesses are not sure how social networking tools can help promote their business. 68 percent of small businesses mention that “their business success depends upon a strong relationship with the customer, providing goods and services highly customized to their needs and being responsive to their demands”. These same small businesses are gravitating towards social media campaigns (48 percent), email marketing initiatives (68 percent) to generate new customer leads and maintain existing ones.

Demandforce acquisition certainly helps Intuit in extending its existing offering of website services. It rounds off the full suite from “get found” to “increase exposure” to “extend communications” to “consolidate presence”.

Beyond the capabilities of Demandforce, the acquisition brings into Intuit’s fold many different small business vertical industry solutions. These verticals are typically ignored or only addressed by web-hosting providers. They constitute a very large part of the SMB universe but with a dichotomous adoption of technology. For example, salons and spas use very limited technology but still want to increase their customer base beyond the usual “word-of-mouth”. On the other hand wealth management businesses use advanced and emerging technologies but strongly desire customer expansion, communication nurturing, feedback mechanism and certified reviews to positively impact their business.

Success of the acquisition will be dependent upon Intuit’s ability to integrate Demandforce with its web services, back-end systems such as Quickbooks and cross-sell across both Demandforce and Intuit customers.

It is a move in the right direction.

Anurag Agrawal
Techaisle