June 2, 2006

Intuit's QuickBooks Enterprise - Reseller Channel to Penetrate the NetSuite, Microsoft and others

Earlier this week, Intuit launched a reseller program for QuickBooks Enterprise (QBE): QuickBooks Enterprise Solution Provider Program. QBE is Intuit's business management tool for businesses who need up to 20 users using QuickBooks at one time and need more robust, "medium-sized" business features.

This new program, right now is only going to be in a pilot stage and will be capped at about 100 users said Bill Lucchini, Intuit's Vice President Mid Market Group.

Intuit has an army of 30,000 Pro Advisors who are certified experts in QuickBooks and 60,000 developers in its Intuit Developers Network for Intuit programmers to build 3rd party add-ons to Intuit products (Quickbase, Quickbooks, etc)

While these almost 100,000 partners is a HUGE number and powerful, Intuit realized that they were having many customers coming to QuickBooks Enterprise from competing vendors. The "problem" was that many of these customers had legacy data and/or business solutions that they really needed custom work for.

Bill explained that QuickBooks Enterprise is still easy to use and relatively simple to install for many new customers. However, for those customers who have existing solutions, the process often requires a professional who can take the time and has the expertise to migrate customers from one platform to another.

The new reseller channel will offer more "medium-sized" business solutions to the many customers who are growing out of QuickBooks. QuickBooks Enterprise Solution Provider Program addresses this growing demand for simple, but powerful solutions, by providing marketing, support, training and lead generation tools to help partners locate potential customers and work with current users to maximize the power of the product. Program members will also receive the company¬?s highest discounts on QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions business management software and commissions for sales bundled with professional services. To ensure end-user satisfaction, membership is limited to QuickBooks Enterprise-certified advisors with significant experience in assisting mid-market clients.

At the Sage Insights Conference in Nashville I recently attended many of the Sage resellers told me they get many customers from QuickBooks, my thinking was that this shows a liability for Intuit. However, on the other hand, Bill explained to me that since QuickBooks is used by MOST small businesses in the United States any of Intuit's competition is going to have most of their customers from QuickBooks!

The market for business management solutions is so big that one vendor is NOT going to have a lock on the entire market. It's big enough for Microsoft, NetSuite, Peachtree, Cougar Mountain and others to all play in the sand box.

Intuit's message with this new reseller channel is pretty clear:

1. Customers who outgrow QuickBooks can work with a certified solution provider who is beyond just accounting solutions and QuickBooks but has more expertise for custom accounting package installations and migrations.

2. Resellers of Sage, Microsoft, NetSuite and other competing vendors are welcome to make money and have another solution for their customers by selling and support QBE.

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