Intuit And Salesforce Focus On Small Businesses

Intuit and salesforce.com have formed a partnership aimed at making it easier for small businesses to manage customer information and financial data.

A recent survey by Intuit found that more than one-half of small businesses perform CRM tasks manually or with software not designed for the job; 28 percent use pen and paper, while another 28 percent manually enter data on spreadsheets. These results signal a need in the market for integrated solutions.

“This alliance will create offerings that allow small businesses to better manage their customers and deals,” said Dan Wernikoff, vice president and general manager of Intuit’s Financial Management Solutions division.

“With thousands of small businesses using QuickBooks and Salesforce, this is a great way for two industry leaders to leverage the next era of cloud computing to help small businesses grow.”

As a part of the strategic alliance, Intuit will resell Salesforce CRM with QuickBooks integration that synchronizes customer data with QuickBooks and QuickBooks Online. This application will provide streamlined information to those in sales and management to eliminate data entry in two different systems.

When its available, it will be a featured application on the Intuit App Center, where small businesses can find , buy and use Web-based applications that run on the Intuit Partner Platform. The application is expected this summer with pricing to be announced at launch.