Executive Summary

  • This article is part of our honest vendor series, which is one of the only ratings of vendors rather than applications.
  • The vendor quality is critical to the decision making process as software purchases have a high long term involvement by the software vendor.

Introduction

Intuit has been growing well for years but seems to have plenty of gas left in the tank. Intuit reports over ½ million businesses using their application worldwide – which would make them the number one SaaS enterprise business application.

The future for Quickbooks looks good as it does for all of the software vendors in this section. The days of mediocre financials functionality being used, simply because it came along with an ERP application may be within five years of being a significantly reduced feature of corporate America.

One of the most interesting things we will be keeping an eye on is what happens to the Quickbooks application ecosystem. Currently, the applications are a bit limited in scope, and several are of below-average quality, but in a few years that could drastically change.

Quality of Information Provided

The quality of the information provided by Intuit is of good quality. Intuit does not employ the large number of salespeople that other vendors that we cover do. This is because Intuit is still only a borderline enterprise software vendor (even though they have an enterprise software applications). Their margins are on the lower side, and much of the information they provide is through their website.

Consulting and Support

Consulting and support at Intuit are both above average. Intuit’s applications require much less handholding than almost any other application that we cover, and it is rare to hear complaints about either Intuit consulting and support.

Internal Efficiency

Many people do not know, but Intuit’s headquarters in Mountain View is right next to Google and is virtually indistinguishable from the Googleplex. Intuit even seems to have copied some of Google’s culture, down to providing free bicycles – although Intuit’s bicycles are blue, while Google’s are clown colors. With most software vendors there is a negative relationship between the size of the company and the employees’’ satisfaction (until one gets into the monopoly vendors like SAP and Oracle where the compensation is the best in the industry). However, Intuit breaks this trend by still having a motivated workforce.

Innovation

Quicken is a moderate innovator. Given their prominence, one might expect us to rate them more highly; however, if one investigates their applications, they are better priced and stable than actually innovative. However, they are still a perfect value vendor and an easy decision for small to medium businesses.

Vendor Scores

Honest Vendor Ratings

Search for the vendor in this table using the search bar in the upper right of the table. Shortening Key: 
  • VC = Vendor Consulting
  • VS = Vendor Support
  • QIP = Quality of Information Provided
  • IE = Internal Efficiency
  • I = Innovation
  • C = Category
  • ACS = Average Category Score
VendorVCVSQIPIEICACG
Average Score for the BI Heavy Software Category6.45.35.14.54.4BI HeavyCategory Average
Average Score for the BI Light Software Category7.76.756.36.8BI LightCategory Average
Average Score for the CRM Software Category5.24.44.33.43.4CRMCategory Average
Average Score for the PLM Software Category7.37.56.36.26.3PLMCategory Average
Average Score for the Production Planning Software Category7.36.765.25.7Production PlanningCategory Average
Average Score for the Small and Medium ERP Software Category7.36.76.36.75.9Small and Medium ERPCategory Average
Average Score for the Supply Planning Software Category7.56.76.15.55.6Supply PlanningCategory Average
Average Score Score for the Demand Planning Software Category7.76.96.66.16.1Demand PlanningCategory Average
Average Score for the Big ERP Software Category4.73.82.72.22.6Big ERPCategory Average
Actuate77865BI HeavyApplication Specific
Arena Solutions91010810PLMApplication Specific
AspenTech43437Production PlanningApplication Specific
Base CRM88997CRMApplication Specific
Birst8888.59BI HeavyApplication Specific
Business Forecast Systems991098Demand PlanningApplication Specific
Delfoi888.548Production PlanningApplication Specific
Demand Works99101010Supply PlanningApplication Specific
ERPNext888.5109Small and Medium ERPApplication Specific
FinancialForce10109109.5FinancialApplication Specific
Hamilton Grant89.589.58PLMApplication Specific
Intacct1010999.5FinancialApplication Specific
Intuit88966.5FinancialApplication Specific
JDA3.53422Demand PlanningApplication Specific
Microsoft45211Small and Medium ERPApplication Specific
MicroStrategy87777BI HeavyApplication Specific
NetSuite65644CRMApplication Specific
OpenERP788.587Small and Medium ERPApplication Specific
Oracle52111ManyApplication Specific
PlanetTogether91081010Supply PlanningApplication Specific
Preactor787.533Production PlanningApplication Specific
ProcessPro1089109Small and Medium ERPApplication Specific
QlikTech87589.5CRMApplication Specific
Salesforce73866CRMApplication Specific
SAS971077Demand PlanningApplication Specific
SugarCRM44553CRMApplication Specific
Tableau101091010BI LightApplication Specific
Teradata98.58.568BI HeavyApplication Specific
ToolsGroup1010999Demand PlanningApplication Specific
SAP53111ManyApplication Specific

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