Literature Reviews On Intuit QuickBooks- Free Sample

Question: Discuss about theLiterature Reviews on Intuit QuickBooks. Answer: Introduction The Australian accounting software market which used to be dominated by two major players has exploded into the fiercest battleground between several players (Goss 2015). In this paper literature review has been done on the online accounting software Intuit QuickBooks. The review has been segmented into six segments; that discusses the various aspects of the software, and finally, the recommendations for improvements have been presented. History of Intuit QuickBooks Intuit Inc. is an American giant founded in late 1980s by its two shareholders Scott Cook and Tom Proulx. Scott Cook who was an employee of Proctor Gamble realized early in his career that the paper-pencil based accounting will soon be obsolete and will be replaced by computers. In his quest to find a programmer, the conceiver ran into the second founder member, Tom Proulx. The company started its journey in Palo Alto with a BASIC program and never looked back again. The first program was made for running in IBM computers and the subsequent days another program was designed in UCSD Pascal for running in Apple computers (Intuit.com, 2016). The company acquired the tax preparation software firm Chipsoft in 1993 which was a key decision for the company and in the same year went public in American stock exchange. After the company had gone public, the market capitalization of the company reached 2 Billion USD. The growth was driven by the buyout offer that was made by Microsoft which failed due to disapproval of US Department of Justice. Following the breakup the company faced immense pressure in the late 90s. The company then shifted its attention solely on its QuickBook and TurboTax. The company in the subsequent time bought large stakes of Excite and acquired the Dallas-based tax-preparation software developer Lacerte and also invested in CheckFree for strengthening the partnership. The present valuation of the company is more than 20 Billion USD and has ranked in Fortunes Top 100 Company to work for. It has also ranked in Fortunes Americas most admired software companies (Fortune, 2016). In 2013 sold its financial services to Thoma Bravo' and in 2015 laid off around 5% of its workforce for reorganization. Development and Adoption of Intuit QuickBooks Intuit Inc. prepares accounting software that deals with the tax preparation and the finances. The company has products like Quicken and TurboTax under an umbrella which are meant for serving the larger businesses and the QuickBooks for serving the independent bookkeepers and the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The company also has QuickBooks Online (QBO) that is cloud based SaaS type software which provided a cheap cloud platform to many small businesses. The three modules TurboTax', QuickBooks,' Quicken' were improved with the time and in 2008 various modules to lure the independent accountants and the bookkeepers were presented. Special modules like Intuit Small Business were launched that could help in payments on the go with online software integration. The associated services like getting a website and On the Go helped to win a plethora of customers and accountants. The Mint services were finally launched in 2015 and are improved with time (Quickbooks.intuit.com. 2016). Figure 1: The product timeline of Intuit (Image Source: marketrealist.com, 2016) The services offered by the company after reaching maturity were ExpensAble,' Investor Insight,' Networth' and several other Quicken services. In the subsequent year, 1998 services like BankNOW and MacInTax were incorporated. In the next few years Intuit International and Internet account Administration were incorporated and improved. In 2000 the QuickBooks online edition was implemented, and the services were all summed up under broad categories and improved. In the same year, the Complete Payroll' was incorporated (Intuit.com.au. 2016). The Current Market Size of Intuit QuickBooks The company faces intense competition from its competitors both in domestic and the international market. In its domestic market, the company has around 80% shares in the market. The companys QuickBooks targets the small enterprises and has around 29 million customers in the USA. The goal of the company is to serve SMEs, and the products are highly customized to serve their needs. The company has identified 400,000 accountants who serve the SMEs and hence provide a huge influence in its adoption and has more than 5 Million SMEs. Figure 2: The quarterly performance of Intuit (Image Source: Intuit Inc. - Financial Info - SEC Filings 2016) The above figure shows the performance of the company in five quarters the customer counts is presented in the Y-axis and the quarters are presented in the X-axis. The company was introduced in Australia in the year of 2013. Initially, the company operated from Malaysia but with the increasing customer counts; the company finally decided to place a local base in Australia and is promising to hire more employees. The number of customers in its first year was around seven thousand but in the subsequent year, the company managed to grab around 30,000 customers (Businessinsider.com.au. 2016). With its services and competitive pricing, the company aims to create a huge dent in the market share of the other companies and also create new opportunities. The Market Leaders in Australian Market The accounting service provider MYOB is the leader of the Australian accounting software. The three companies MYOB, Xero, and Intuit, rule the market in Australia, and the other service providers have failed to create any impact in the market. The self-evaluation of MYOB indicates that the company is worth 2.5 Billion Australian Dollar. In the domain of the cloud computing, Xero has more customer share compared to any other accounting software in Australia. Xero has around 320,000 users compared to 116,000 users of MYOB which is the nearest competitor in the domain of cloud computing (Financial Review, 2014). To counteract the cloud dominance of Xero both MYOB and Intuit are investing heavily in building the cloud services. The Competitive Advantages of Intuit QuickBooks The services like Handsfree Entry,' Mobile Apps', and Connectivity makes the services of the company intuitive and better compared to its peers (Quickbooks.intuit.com, 2016). Apart from the dedicated services stated above, the ease of money management, Expense billing, reporting, sales invoicing and the user-friendly interface makes Intuit stand out of the crowd. The competitive pricing that is being offered by the company is best in class and acts as the icing on the cake. The services of Intuit are majorly cloud based, and the several advantages of mobile computing are also under its umbrella. The Current Gaps and Challenges in Intuit QuickBooks The software of Intuit faces several glitches in its software. Michael Hiltzik (2016) in his article discusses a similar issue that has resulted in a bad name for the company. Feedbacks from its user show that many accountants have lost loyal consumers due to the glitches that the system faces. The feature TurboTax gives the user the ability to prepare tax returns on their own. Due to the glitch, the company lost 7.25% in 2015. The users around the world have also complained about the various technological complications which have led to confusion among users. The company also gets complaints regarding the cloud services and the speed of the services. Recommendations There are many scopes of improvement in services of the company. The recommendations are: More investment in RD: The Company should invest more for improvement of the services so that the software doesnt have any glitches that reduce the consumer satisfaction. The services should be made simpler, and the new services that are incorporated should find different sections to reduce confusion. The services should be made faster so that user enjoys a better interaction between the server and computer. Conclusion This report has discussed the various aspect of Intuit in the various segments, in the first segment the history has been discussed in the second segment the evolution of the software has been presented, in the subsequent section the present market size has been presented, then the market leaders in the Australian market have been discussed, the competitive advantages and the challenges were given and finally the recommendations were presented so that the services of the company can be improved. References Goss, D. (2015).Small Business and Society (Routledge Revivals). Routledge. Marketrealist.com. (2016). [online] Available at: https://marketrealist.com/2016/03/intuits-stock-rose-4-earnings-heres/ [Accessed 13 Sep. 2016]. Investors.intuit.com. (2016). Intuit Inc. - Financial Info - SEC Filings. [online] Available at: https://investors.intuit.com/financial-information/sec-filings/default.aspx [Accessed 13 Sep. 2016]. Quickbooks.intuit.com. (2016). [online] Available at: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/accountants/resources/benefits-for-clients [Accessed 13 Sep. 2016]. Times, L. (2016). Intuit changed TurboTax this year, triggering an enormous customer uproar. latimes.com. Retrieved 13 September 2016, from https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-intuits-catastrophic-turbotax-20150118-column.html Businessinsider.com.au. (2016). [online] Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/charts-the-battle-for-supremacy-in-australias-cloud-accounting-market-2015-4 [Accessed 13 Sep. 2016]. Investors.intuit.com. (2016). Intuit Inc. - Financial Info - SEC Filings. [online] Available at: https://investors.intuit.com/financial-information/sec-filings/default.aspx [Accessed 13 Sep. 2016]. Fortune. (2016). Intuit. [online] Available at: https://beta.fortune.com/fortune500/intuit-552 [Accessed 13 Sep. 2016]. Intuit.com.au. (2016). [online] Available at: https://www.intuit.com.au/ [Accessed 13 Sep. 2016]. Financial Review. (2014). The price hike for Intuit's QuickBooks. [online] Available at: https://www.afr.com/technology/price-hike-for-intuits-quickbooks-20141021-jy9ao [Accessed 13 Sep. 2016].