An Editorial
I have loved QuickBooks and Intuit a long, long time... in fact since even before I purchased the very first copy of QuickBooks sold in Oklahoma way back when. And while I have not always agreed with everything they did, I did for most things understand them.
But things started changing a few years ago. Case in point... for the life of me I will really never understand letting go of your flagship product 'Quicken' that started the company no matter what. To me that was like "selling the family farm simply because you had no interest in ever seeing your children grow up to be farmers even if one of them already told you they wanted to be a farmer when they grew up."
Oh sure, it might have made 'business sense' but if you got rid of Quicken, then why not go ahead and throw out that 'kitchen table where it all began as well, you know the one where Scott Cook and his wife sat around and discussed their checkbook that was the foundation upon which Quicken was based?'
On June 22 Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi sent a notice to Intuit employees in which he announced, among other things, that 715 employees would be loosing their positions. It seems that employee layoffs at Intuit at this June-July time frame of the year is really nothing new, it has happened with some degree of regularity over the years as the corporation made changes and adjustments in preparation of the end of the fiscal year.
But this year things seem to be somewhat different because they seem to be focusing these 'cuts' on the need to add 'different' positions since they simultaneously announced they would add more than 700 new 'roles' to build upon new capabilities needed as the corporation looks ahead.
While Intuit keeps talking about being focused on the needs of their customers as they perceive them to be in what they term 'the five big bets' they are also talking about how they 'prioritized the most important work so they could determine what work should be deprioritized or eliminated.' With QuickBooks Online Ecosystem Revenues from worldwide QBO subscriptions having finally edged beyond QuickBooks Desktop Ecosystem Revenues on a quarterly basis during this fiscal year, and Intuit making statements like "we must transform into a world-class SaaS organization...", one must wonder just how long before QuickBooks Desktop will be one of those 'deprioritized' ventures cast aside like individuals who lost their positions.
You have to be careful not to discard your best products, your best customers and your best supporters simply because you believe you can 'force them to change their ways'. Just as you have to be careful not to throw out the baby with the bath water, and that applies to good employees too who can frequently be re-trained or re-purposed, rather than acquire new people in some other resource market for perhaps a much cheaper labor rate.
While this is 'an editorial', it wouldn't be fair of me not to offer up the Blog I spoke of at the start of this article, so you go ahead and read it for yourself. https://www.intuit.com/blog/news-social/a-message-from-intuit-ceo-sasan-goodarzi-to-intuit-employees/
You are all smart readers, you interpret the messages 'in the message' and feel free to leave your own comments here.
Murph
Disclosure:
Intuit is a registered tradename and trademark of Intuit, corporation. QuickBooks is a registered tradename and trademark of Intuit, corporation.