Whether people are managing the books for a small business, preparing their personal or business tax returns, accessing capital, or seeking personal or professional financial advice, they benefit from moving beyond simple transactions to seamless interactions between themselves and the people and products they rely on. We introduced our One Intuit Ecosystem strategy last year for this very reason. We saw the potential value that could be unlocked by streamlining interactions like these, and by enabling connections among the participants in our platform and unlocking the power of many for the prosperity of one. One year in, we are already seeing numerous examples of the kinds of indispensable connections made possible by our One Intuit Ecosystem.
Connecting tax filers with experts through TurboTax Live
With last year’s launch of TurboTax Live, Intuit made available on-demand access to a comprehensive network of fully credentialed tax experts for the 60 percent of individual and family tax filers who rely on professional assistance to complete their returns. That first season, we increased the confidence of Turbo Tax Live filers by 19 points while generating millions of dollars of supplemental income for the ~2,000 tax professionals on our platform and strengthening retention for TurboTax at the same time.
Connecting QuickBooks with TurboTax for a more seamless experience
In the early days of Intuit, we focused on connecting a single customer to a single product to successfully complete a task, whether filing their taxes or doing their books. With the One Intuit Ecosystem, we’re now connecting products so that customers can get even more done, more simply. One example is our integration of QuickBooks Self-Employed and TurboTax Self-Employed, which helps the self-employed—currently about one-third of the workforce and projected to approach 50 percent in the coming years—more easily separate personal and business expenses and accurately track mileage and receipts. Any self-employed person can tell you how critical this is; deducting eligible business expenses can yield tremendous tax savings, but categorizing a full year of receipts at the end of the year can be onerous and error-prone.
By bundling QuickBooks Self-Employed with TurboTax Self-Employed, we’ve made categorizing expenses throughout the year, even by industry, as simple as swiping left for business, and swiping right for personal. Come tax time, completing business and personal returns is quick, painless, and accurate with our integrated experience. It’s also highly advantageous; this spring we generated for the average self-employed person $4,628 in tax savings. That equates to an average of 8 percent of the customer’s income—a real boost in prosperity for these hard-working individuals.
Connecting small businesses with accountants on QuickBooks Online
Small businesses can be powerful engines of prosperity, employing 60 percent of the global workforce, but with one out of two failing in their first five years, they need all the help they can get. Not surprisingly, 89 percent of small businesses report they are more successful when they work with an accountant. Meanwhile, many accountants would love to grow their practice and be a trusted advisor by helping more small businesses succeed, but they’re so busy sorting through shoeboxes of records, spreadsheets, and travelogues that they’re limited in their ability to focus on generating new leads.
The One Intuit Ecosystem gave us a way to help both small businesses and accountants become more successful. By using QuickBooks Online to connect our millions of small business customers with our hundreds of thousands of accountant customers, we’ve turned the product into a matchmaking platform—and a highly effective one. Today, 58 percent of our QuickBooks Online customers work with an accountant, while accountants have tripled the number of leads they get from us since last year. The results they’re achieving together have generated a higher customer retention rate for these QuickBooks Online customers—a sign of the greater value people are realizing through our ecosystem.
Connecting banking and accounting through shared data and user experiences
Adding another member of the One Intuit Ecosystem to the mix, Intuit is partnering with financial institutions to create seamless experiences across banking and accounting – essentially, targeting an ideal state where both banking and accounting become one. Today, we are experimenting with financial institutions on solutions for “know your customer” (KYC), lending, cash management, service personalization and invoicing/payments.
Building on Intuit’s APIs and user interface framework, we can deliver joint experiences to financial institutions that can be seamlessly embedded within their user interface or within Intuit properties. Customers will be able to sign in, have access to critical insights at their fingertips, and more importantly, be able to take action or have access to needed capital painlessly, creating personalized solutions that deliver value that otherwise would not have been possible. We will also bring quantifiable value to our financial institution partners with more engaged customers, higher retention and increased adoption of their services.
Connecting small businesses and families with access to capital
Throughout the One Intuit Ecosystem, secure data flows help improve the experience of our customers while helping participants form mutually beneficial relationships. With the express permission of customers, we draw this data from QuickBooks, as well as from third-party sources such as banks, governments, and payroll companies, and from the customer’s own behavior. We analyze the data through artificial intelligence and allow its integration into the products our customers use.
QuickBooks Capital uses these data flows to help small business borrowers and lenders do business together more successfully. During their first two years, small businesses often lack the track record and the credit history needed to secure a short-term loan. Lenders would love to be able to form relationships with these businesses, but they also must balance their risk profile. With our data and AI algorithms, Intuit was able to facilitate loans for QuickBooks Capital customers, 60 percent of which were previously considered unlendable by financial institutions, with a loss rate less than half the industry average. That’s a big win for both small businesses and banks.
Families can face similar challenges accessing capital. This year, we made TurboTax an open platform to create a year-round financial app called Turbo, which helps consumers secure loans at lower interest rates. For our partners, these pre-qualified leads can yield conversion rates up to nine times higher than other sources. Again, everybody wins.
Connecting our customers with the innovations to come
One year into our One Intuit Ecosystem strategy, our customers and partners are realizing greater value than ever through our first generation of product integrations and people interactions, and there is more to come. As the One Intuit Ecosystem continues to evolve, Intuit is using artificial intelligence and machine learning to enable even more flexibility, personalization, and accuracy for our customers. These continuous improvements are built on the rich set of data our customers allow us to use on their behalf, data from our ecosystem partners such as banks, governments, payroll companies, and others, and from observing customer behavior and improving their experiences with us. And we’re providing developers with new tools and processes to help them introduce new features and capabilities that enable more connections, more quickly.
We’re excited to see what the next 12 months brings for the One Intuit Ecosystem and its myriad participants. Together, we’re fulfilling the Intuit mission to drive prosperity for businesses, individuals, and families around the world.