Today’s small business owners are much like the consumers of a decade ago making the switch from a flip-phone to a smartphone. They understand that the cloud offers more than the promise of an improved product.
The iPhone did not simply represent a better version of a flip-phone. It completely changed what a phone was used for.
The same holds true for the future of small business software. Whether it’s mobile payments, CRM, or back-office tools, small business owners are adopting cloud tools not because they see incremental improvements, but because they see a game-changing opportunity to work more efficiently, reach new customers, and uncover deeper insights into their performance.
At Intuit, we know that the key to delivering on the promise of the small business cloud sits with developers.
That’s why we’ve made QuickBooks Online a truly open platform. That’s why the new developer.intuit.com was designed to enable developers to create game-changing applications for small businesses efficiently and quickly. And that’s why we’re committed to creating a partnership with developers to increase the adoption of apps so that we can expand the QuickBooks Online platform, and grow together.
We’re already seeing enormous success thanks to our open approach.
This year, for the first time in our 20 year history of serving this market, more new small business customers chose the built-for-the-cloud QuickBooks Online over the desktop version.
Two weeks ago, our second-quarter results showed that we added more than 100,000 QuickBooks Online subscribers on 50% growth, bringing the number of total paying subscribers worldwide to 841,000.
What’s the secret to this growth? A big part of it can be directly attributed to a jump in developer activity thanks to our open platform.
Developer activity on the QuickBooks Online platform has increased 10X in the past year. A year ago we had about 1,000 active developers working on our platform. Today, we have over 12,000. A year ago, there were 125 apps that worked with QuickBooks. Today, we have over 900.
And we’ve ensured that this hard work pays off by ensuring that developer apps are discovered and adopted by enhancing our app store. This store, Apps.com, offers the largest global market of cloud-based small businesses with over 500K unique shoppers each month.
The even better news is that we’re just getting started. Our research shows that small businesses are only just reaching the tipping point of cloud adoption. While we estimate that 37% of small businesses are currently adapted to the cloud, that number will jump to 78% by 2020. That presents a massive, hungry market eager for new solutions that developers can build.
So, whether you are an established business with millions of customers or just getting started, we’re excited to have you on the platform. Some of you will get your first introduction to the world of small business, finance, and accounting by working with us. Others will have experience with multiple accounting packages; that’s ok. Our main goal is to provide the right solution for every small business, and we can’t do that without you.
Alexis Prenn, Co-founder and CEO at Receipt Bank, shares his experience working with Intuit Developer:
“Receipt Bank started working with the QuickBooks Online platform and the Intuit Developer team at the beginning of 2014. Perhaps unusually, our work was global – USA, Canada, UK and Australia from the beginning.
The warmth of the welcome plus the technical and commercial support made the process a pleasure. Around the world we have loved being in the trenches, shoulder to shoulder articulating the powerful benefits of cloud accounting and the role that the QuickBooks platform plays in helping firms to achieve these competitive advantages.”
Receipt Bank is just one of many developers working with us. Since the new year kicked off, developers that have launched integrations with us include ScanWriter Plus, ClockShark Time Tracking, OrdersSystem.com, Entryless, VeriClock, Fundera, Bill & Pay, Hubdoc, and 71lbs Shipping Refunds. Will you be next?
I’m excited about our roadmap for 2015. We’ll be launching new tools and services, expanding on our developer docs, and continuing to streamline the publishing process for apps.com. We have new features coming to developer.intuit.com and apps.com for our global markets as well – Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, India, and soon France and Brazil. If you want to influence what those tools and services are, and are willing to give us honest feedback and input on what we’ve got in development, we’d love to have you join our developer panel — let us know your interest by signing up here: http://intuit.me/developerpanel . In the meantime, if you have questions, the quickest way to get them answered is via our live community.
Our platform is open. Small businesses need you and your apps. Come journey with us to reach further, and do amazing work with Intuit Developer.
Thanks,
Avi Golan, VP and GM, Intuit Developer Group
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