1.

Case Summary in a line:

“Do we shift to platforms, or play safe and keep the products”

2. Company Background:
Cook started the company from his wife's idea, as she complained about the time wasted
reviewing and paying bills. Cook’s obsession with having great empathy and trying to
understand customers developed at P&G and became a hallmark of Intuit.Intuit also beat
Microsoft, although they tried merging it just did not work out.

3. Expansion Ideas:
a. Small & Medium Businesses
Intuit used its customer-first approach and determined that SMBs could make up a
significant portion of Quicken customers. The critical tasks for SMB accounting
were payroll, invoicing, and paying bills all of which could be added to
QuickBooks, the flagship product.

b. Auxillary Supplies
Personal checks were a great business opportunity, intuit realized it, while trying
to make its software capable of correctly printing personal checks, it could
effectively and profitably sell supplies to its customers and make millions.

c. Tax Software:
Diversifying its product line and including tax software for professionals and
consumers, Intuit captured a very big software market. By extending the offering
of software for accountants and other tax preparation professionals, Intuit boosted
its ties with this key constituent group.

4. Keeping up with tech:

In the domain of SMB Intuit gave an offering in online cloud tech solutions as early as 2001. As
technology improved and customers became more comfortable with cloud-based solutions, Intuit
expanded its product offerings and moved everything on the cloud.
5. Transforming QuickBooks from Product into Platform
Ideas:
a. Intuit Commerce Network (ICN):
This service would enable SMBs who were QuickBooks customers to more easily
conduct transactions within QuickBooks.
b. Platform for Third-Party Developers:
By leveraging, SDKs, APIs & Apps.com

c. Platform for Third-Party Products and Services:

QuickBooks Financing, becoming a source of lending money.
d. Concierge
Provide group-based discounts, QuickBooks customers could get access to savings on
products and services they needed regularly to run their small businesses.

Major Issues:
1. Need major sales & business development team as, at first Intuit's skillset was focused on
solving customer problems, not partnering with third-party product or service providers.
2. High risk and a major opportunity cost on existing products and services, when trying to
push them into platforms.