Below is the new promo video for the Intuit Workplace App Center, featuring some of the great web apps that help Small Business owners boost their bottom line and get connected to a wider array of powerful online services. We'll be updating the video with other new apps as they come online, but this is our first public version.
A quick note to developers new to the Intuit Partner Platform (IPP): the apps shown here are either fully built on IPPs platform-as-a-service (PaaS) or federated, then packaged and sold (as SaaS apps) using IPP. Either way, the App Center is where end-users find, try, but and use those applications.
In June Intuit hosted the "Startups and the Cloud" event bringing together
industry experts and successful SaaS startups to discuss a range of issues
startups must consider to build a successful business and get an idea to market
as quickly as possible.
At the event we were joined by Scott Cook, co-founder of Intuit Inc. in 1983
and now serves as the chairman of the Executive Committee. Scott was interviewed
by Bill Lucchini (VP of the Intuit’s PaaS Group discussing how cloud computing
can foster innovation and how an intense focus on customer needs enables
businesses to deliver successful products.
“The defeat of Microsoft Money at the hands of Intuit's Quicken marks a
rare chapter in the annals of software history.
Intuit is one of the few companies to take Microsoft head-on on its home
turf--packaged software--and come out on top. Even more notably, Intuit has
managed to do it several times, with Quicken of course, but also with QuickBooks
and TurboTax.”
It was a special day for Scott and Intuit, and we were very fortunate to have him
at the event in person to share his perspective not only on that monumental battle but also few stories about Intuit's early days as a startup, how he sees opportunities for startups in today's economic climate, the importance on solving real customer problems, his excitement around the Intuit Partner Platform (IPP) and the world of SaaS.
More videos from the event:
Video 1: Welcome,
by Bill Lucchini, VP and GM, Platform as a Service Group, Intuit (@wapl).
Video 2: State of cloud computing and the market opportunity” Vishy
Venugopalan (@midtownninja)
We’ll be publishing the rest of the videos (5 in total) over the next week.
Enjoy!
In June Intuit hosted the "Startups and the Cloud" event bringing together industry experts and successful SaaS startups to discuss a range of issues startups must consider to build a successful business and get an idea to market as quickly as possible.
Below is the second video (2 of 5): “State of cloud computing and the market opportunity” Vishy Venugopalan (@midtownninja) an analyst at Longworth Venture Partners. Prior to Longworth, Vishy was at The 451 Group, a enterprise IT research firm, where he provided research insights to technology companies and investors on enterprise software market segments.
In this talk, Vishy set the scene for the discussions ahead, describing the cloud computing market and the opportunities as he sees them.
Startups and the Cloud - Video 2 (of 5)
“State of cloud computing and the market opportunity”
We’ll be publishing the rest of the videos (5 in total) over the next couple weeks. You can check out the first video here.
The choices startup Software as a Service (SaaS) providers have in this new age of “Cloud Computing” can be overwhelming, confusing and risky.
In June Intuit hosted the "Startups and the Cloud" event bringing together industry experts and successful SaaS startups to discuss a range of issues startups must consider to build a successful business and get an idea to market as quickly as possible.
At the event, we were joined by leading VCs and startups who shared their views and experiences about how to navigate the cloud provider space, as well as Intuit’s co-founder Scott Cook who discussed how cloud computing can foster innovation and how an intense focus on customer needs enables businesses to deliver successful products.
It was a successful event, with good attendance and some great content that emerged during the day. We also had a filming crew in attendance who recorded each of the main sessions. Over the next few days we’ll be publishing the recorded sessions (five in all).
Below is the first of the sessions – the event Welcome and introduction by Bill Lucchini, VP and GM, Platform as a Service Group, Intuit. Enjoy!
Last week I had the opportunity to meet with some of the team who
have developed a brand new Flex application “ViewMyPayCheck”, built on the Intuit Partner Platform (IPP) and now available as a beta product at WorkPlace.
We’re always excited when new applications go live on IPP, but what makes
ViewMyPayCheck particularly interesting is the fact that it is an Intuit
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product built by the internal Intuit Payroll
product group using the same platform as external IPP partners are using today.
More on this in a second…First, a bit more about ViewMyPayCheck…
ViewMyPayCheck enables small businesses to provide their employees the same
easy and protected access to their payroll information that employees at large
companies enjoy. Employees log in to the application (entering their WorkPlace
credentials) and can view and print their paystubs and, in the future, other
payroll-related information.
The team began development on the ViewMyPayCheck project in October after
winning an Intuit “IdeaJam”, a regular internal competition that encourages
“whitespace” project time for internal teams to collaborate on innovative ideas
for potential products. Once the team had the go-ahead to go from idea to
productization, they began rapid development on IPP, allowing the team to
develop and deploy the SaaS solution in less than three month, without them
having to do themselves the custom work normally associated
with authentication/authorization system integration, permission model
development and hosting & billing infrastructure that scales – all the stuff
that comes for “free” on IPP.
The interesting thing for external IPP developers to take note of here is
since WorkPlace now hosts this ViewMyPayCheck product (built by Intuit), the
small businesses and their employees who use ViewMyPayCheck will find it easy to
find, try and buy other WorkPlace solutions that can help solve other business
problems – solutions developed by not only by Intuit but also external IPP
developers. This is the small business ecosystem at work!
Here’s the video interview I did with the ViewMyPayCheck: the team members
are Lalit Shahani, Deepa Viswanathan, Michael Dehlwes and David Leary (who
unfortunately couldn’t join us for the interview itself).
You can try ViewMyPayCheck at WorkPlace here and find
out more including demo videos here.
So… Scott, what is the Advantage SmartRoutes for TomTom GPS application?
Advantage SmartRoutes is an application designed for any company whose
staff or contractors drive frequently for sales, service or other calls.
SmartRoutes, combined with TomTom GPS devices help centralize, organize, assign
and optimize the driving work. It is a complete commercial solution to improve
productivity, service, and lower costs.
Wow! That’s powerful -- how does it work? It provides a central
repository (or sync with QuickBooks customers) to consolidate all the places
personnel need to drive. Then, it geocodes this information using Yahoo! Maps
and allows users to visually build optimal itineraries. Once the route is
built, SmartRoutes pushes the itineraries into a selected TomTom GPS unit, which
is passed to the driver. It becomes an ‘intelligent navigator’, taking the
driver(s) to all the places they need to go, in sequence and most efficiently.
QuickBooks integration? Yes, SmartRoutes syncs with QuickBooks data to
make all customers available within the app. The customer information is then geocoded for mapping
and route planning.
How long did it take you to build the app?
Approx 400 man-hours. We contracted outside Flex expertise.
What advice would you give to other developers interested in
IPP? Keep your first version simple for lower cost and quicker to market
success. Then build on additional demand-driven functionality as
necessary.
Joe Dwyer, owner and President of Dwyer Technology recently joined the Intuit Partner Platform team at the Adobe MAX Conference in San Francisco. As an existing Silver IDN developer with an active QuickBooks SDK application currently on the Intuit Marketplace called MobileBiz (an app enabling customers to take their QuickBooks anywhere they go via their mobile phone) and as one of the early adopters of the Intuit Partner Platform with a new Workplace application, we took the opportunity to talk to Joe about his experience on building his new app, TriggerConnect, on Intuit Partner Platform.
What is your new IPP application for the Intuit Workplace?
My application is called TriggerConnect is the fastest and easiest way for a customer to keep up to date with team members working on client projects. It is available as a beta on the Intuit Workplace. With TriggerConnect workers can update each other on all the latest client happenings in a “twitter-like” way, as well as attach photos and other documents for all to access.
The information from TriggerConnect is attached to your existing QuickBooks customer records enabling a single place to view the latest customer updates and contact information, without limiting access to only those that use QuickBooks on a day to day basis.
So, Joe: How long did it take you to build the app?
With the benefits of the Intuit Partner Platform, TriggerConnect went from concept to product launch in six weeks.
OK...So, what was your Flex learning curve?
Our expertise is in building applications that integrate with QuickBooks, but we had minimal Flex expertise at the start. Having several good Flex books and utilizing resources on the web was definitely a good help and we now consider ourselves well versed in the Flex language and techniques.
How was your transition to the Intuit Partner Platform from the traditional QuickBooks SDK?
The transition to the IPP from the traditional QuickBooks SDK was made easier because we have experience building dozens of applications that integrate with QuickBooks using the traditional SDK. So, we know the data model of QuickBooks well and it made it easier to transition to the IPP. Having servers, hosting, registration, and billing all setup by the IPP also removed a large development and ongoing infrastructure cost from our implementation.
You are also available to help other developers build on IPP?
DwyerTech exists to build applications that integrate with QuickBooks. We do this both for companies wanting to have a certified application they can sell, and for those that simply want to eliminate data entry within QuickBooks. Doing this within the Intuit Partner Platform will enable us to have more flexibility and deliver working SaaS applications at less cost to our ISV customers. Being one of the first developers to jump into IPP enables us to work closely with Intuit to make sure we have the core expertise and understand the framework to the deepest level.
We’re looking forward to enabling companies to be more efficient and automated through the use of their existing QuickBooks and the IPP. We have several initiatives that include mobile applications, e-commerce integration, and improved communication within small businesses. The IPP is a perfect solution for our company as it enables us to focus on the application logic and remove the issues and cost of hosting data in “the cloud”.
At the Adobe MAX08 conference we were very excited to announce Universal Mind’s “Customer Explorer” application as the winner of the Intuit WorkPlace contest. We think this app is pretty amazing – it had to be to win the contest as it beat some stiff competition with a total of ten apps built on the Intuit Partner Platform making it to the final contest review round.
A Big Thanks
A huge thanks to all the developers who entered the app contest. The process was a challenging one for them – they were developing on Beta bits, services and moving targets as our team was preparing the platform to go live. We really appreciate their patience and perseverance and all of the quality feedback they provided throughout. We hope to bring you more examples of their work in the coming weeks.
And also a big thanks to the contest judges: Oliver Marks (writes the Collaboration blog at ZDNet), Mario Morejon (Senior Technical Editor at everythingchannel.com) and Ryan Stewart (Platform Evangelist at Adobe) who took the time to review the ten finalist applications and talk with the developers as part of the judging process.
Now…About the Winning App
Customer Explorer allows customers to quickly see geographic and temporal trends in user's QuickBooks customer data. Users can view interactive heat maps of their balances and filter by time, job status or job type and drill down to specific customer and job details. Street and satellite imagery in the application is provided by MapQuest. Users can also view thematic demographic data provided by Placebase's Pushpin data and mapping service, which includes median household income, in context with their own customer data.
The prize included $5,000 cash, a place at the Intuit booth at MAX08 to demo the winning application (plus covering travel expenses) and an opportunity to take part in the Intuit Partner Platform speaker session at the conference. It also got some deserved attention by press and media (see Slick data-visualizer launched for QuickBooks users).
A preview release of Customer Explorer is available for free on Intuit WorkPlace so you can play with it right now.
Meet One of the Winning Devs
Today we took the opportunity to talk to Doug McCune, Principle Software Engineer at Universal Mind - one of the developers involved in creating the contest-winning Customer Explorer application. At yesterday’s speaking session he mentioned a few things I thought would be cool to share you, so video’d our conversation:
Congratulations to Tom Link (Universal Mind’s CTO), Doug McCune (in this video) and the rest of the Universal Mind team!!
James Ward, Technical Evangelist for Flex at Adobe, has recorded a couple of intro videos for developers new to the Intuit Partner Platform (IPP). In introducing the videos, James wrote:
“The future of software is services in the cloud and rich Internet
application on the client. Adobe has pulled back the curtain and given
us a glimpse of this with new products like photoshop.com and acrobat.com. Intuit is beginning to do the same with QuickBase and Flex through the Intuit Partner Platform.
For developers this means that applications can be built with Flex and
live in the cloud. These applications can even integrate with
QuickBooks. Intuit has built an Eclipse plugin that works with Flex
Builder. This makes it extremely easy to build cloud-based Flex
applications”
