INTUIT TO RESELL SALESFORCE CRM
It was a major announcement today – Intuit will resell Salesforce CRM, an application that will synchronize customer data with QuickBooks and QuickBooks Online. But how much of the QuickBooks market recognizes the Salesforce name and is comfortable with the terms CRM and customer relationship management? I assume there’s a continuum here on which the recognition falls off as the target businesses get smaller.
Under this arrangement, Salesforce CRM will be available on the Intuit App Center this summer with pricing announced then. Salesforce could find the same problem that SAP finds as it tries to sell financial applications into the mid-market. It has to overcome the perception that SAP is for large companies. However, the real problem could be that Salesforce simply won’t be a name with much recognition at all among many QB users. When I speak to typical small CPA firms at conferences, it always hits me how much of the tech talk many of us take for granted is simply over the heads of the people in businesses of that size.
