October 31, 2002

CRN: The Race is on...

My spin:The Race is on to reach out to resellers....but where's Intuit? CRN Magazine's 25 Oct cover story layed out how Microsoft, IBM, BEST Software and others are in a tight race to reach mid-market customers with their respective software offerings by working with resellers.

Although Intuit is a HUGE player in the smb accounting and business management arena, it was missing from CRN's article. Why was it missing? While many of these vendors choose to rely on a network of channel partners (some exclusively) Intuit's going direct or retail to reach mid-market customers. Will this strategy work?

Let's look at the number:

Intuit's, Quicken, for very small businesses and home users has over 15 million customers, and Quickbooks has over 2.5 million customers with 250,000 of them having between 20 and 250 employees - the mid-market sweet spot these vendors want.

Alternatively, BEST Software, has 1.6 million customers in total, with 356,000 of them having over 25 employees and at least 250,000 of them having between 25 - 100+ employees.

Intuit's startegy is OBVIOUSLY working, but reaching out to resellers might even be better!

Check out my recent report about BEST Software's strategy.

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