For someone faced with a seemingly endless array of options for enhancing QuickBooks Online (cue “The Candy Man” from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory to get a sense of how amazing this is from a product management perspective), your feedback and comments are my CliffsNotes—they cut to the chase to provide me with invaluable, real-world insights that could conceivably remain undiscovered by yours truly for a very long time.  As much as I wish I could research and test every conceivable addition or modification to the product that comes to mind, the reality is that your collective wisdom is far more accurate and profound than a lifetime of educated conjecturing on my part.  For this I am truly grateful.

I have worked for quite a few companies, both large and small, over the course of my product career, but I have never encountered an environment as attuned and responsive to customer needs as Intuit.  To a person, everyone I have met during my time here is deeply committed to creating the best possible product to satisfy your needs—and with any luck, occasionally put a smile on your face in recognition of great design, seamless functionality, or something just plain cool.  When you tell us what you think about the product, we really listen.

As for my role on the team, please consider me the Lorax of QuickBooks Online.  Only instead of the trees, I speak for you.

Lance

I was running a small computer tech service and repair company in Madison, Wisconsin called netNerds. I hired really smart computer ‘nerds’ to go help people with their computer problems. It started with 2 contractors and grew to 9. It started with flyers and chalk on the sidewalks and grew into contracts with big clients and a booked schedule. It started an excel sheet and my cell phone and grew into QuickBooks Online.

netNerds has since stopped running. I still have the LLC and a website up (neednetNerds.com) but that’s to satisfy my emotional attachment and not my bank account.

[Fast forward a few years.]  I am now one of the product managers for the QuickBooks Online team…mostly focusing on our pre-accounting solution called Billing Manager, the easiest invoicing software you have used! Yep, I’m totally not biased or anything.  

The mission this team is tasked with is to “Help small businesses succeed.” Plain and simple we’re out to improve the bottom line of our customers.  So that got me thinking.  What did I learn from netNerds…my small business experience? What would I do differently if I could do it again?

It comes down to two things:

1. Play around with the numbers.

We have to acknowledge that sometimes accounting just isn’t a crazy amount of fun. (I know, a shocker!!) This makes us procrastinate actually doing it. Who hasn’t put it off for a day or two at some point? And then, when we do get into the product, there is a tendency to do just enter our invoices, reconcile the bank account and call it a day.  

If this blog had sound effects and animation there would be red lights flashing “ERROR!”  What I realize now is that I should have taken more time to play around with my numbers and find those business insights.
How much more do I have to spend if we increase our customers by 20%?Was that large client really profitable? (turns out he wasn’t!).  What is my employee turnover and training costs?

QuickBooks Online has since made it so much easier to find those insights just from logging in. The new Company Snapshot is enlightening!  Yes, accounting may not be that much fun compared to other things, but that doesn’t mean you can’t ‘play’ around with your numbers.

2. Know when to change your business processes/systems.

At one point I was answering the phones, grassroots marketing, hiring employees, answering our support calls, signing deals, managing the website and trying to grow the business. Just thinking about that makes me want to take a nap…but it’s the same story for all small businesses in the beginning. You do it all…except sleep.

There comes a point though, when you have to make a change. For me it was choosing an online scheduling system that automated the manual work.  (a Setster type app).  For you it may be just as simple as calling QuickBooks support to find out how you can better use your current tool.  What is it for you that is going to help free up your time and your sanity level so you can focus on growing the business?

 So the journey continues – full circle.  I am now working for the product I used to use.  Pretty exciting! More exciting is that the QuickBooks online team has the awesome charter to help make life easier and business better for lots of people, whether you’re the bookkeeper or the business owner.  We’d love to hear from you…in the comments or with your feedback on the product!  What are your 2 things you have learned about running your business?

Kristen
Twitter: @Intuit_Invoice

“I deal with the customers so the engineers don’t have to.”  - Tom Symkowski (Office Space, 1999)

But, in truth, there is a lot more to being a product manager than being a pass through of customer feedback and requests.

Today, I was hoping to give you insight into one of the many aspects of being a product manager – understanding customer problems. This skill is a bit more difficult to master than you think. The reason is that many tend to immediately jump to solutions or take customer feedback literally rather than spending the time to get to the root cause.

To make this more concrete, I was hoping to share a relevant example related to QuickBooks Online Plus. We have recently been getting feedback on our company snapshot feature that customers want the ability to print it. Almost every customer message reads, “I love the new snapshot feature, but please make it so I can print it.”

Quite honestly, the easiest thing to do is to simply add a print button at the top of the page and be done with it. You would be a good product manager if you did this. And, the customers would be happy, right? You did what they asked for.
But, a great product manager would not be able to do this. A great product manager would need to understand why customers need to be able to print. This sounds lame on the surface, but the findings can actually be very interesting.

You may discover that some customers want to be able to:

1. Share it with others in and out of the office who don’t have access to QuickBooks Online.
2. Have access to this data while they are out of the office.
3. Compile a report to hand to a venture capitalist for funding.

Even by getting to this level of detail, you can see how you could have various solutions:

1. Share it with others by doing a quick “share” where you can email a link of the static report without giving access to all of your business data.
2. Get access while you are out of the office with mobile viewing capabilities.
3. Build the hard copy of a valuation report with a printed copy.

If 80% of customers have one root cause over the other, it is easy to pick a solution. But, what if it is split evenly? Should you opt to print the report since it covers all of the cases?

And, we still don’t know if we need to deal with the entire “report” or if we are talking about the specific report components or “widgets”!

So, being a good product manager is as easy, just have the customers talk to the engineers. Being a great product manager is understanding your customers better than they know themselves.

Judd

I am a Product Manager on QuickBooks Online and I enjoy fine bourbon, rap music, and burritos from La Costena.