Employees appear to be taking the trend one step further, however, according to a new survey out today from online database software company Intuit QuickBase, which found employees are increasingly bypassing IT for a DIY approach to tech. Inspired by Forrester’s “HERO Index: Finding Empowered Employees” report from last year, Intuit QuickBase and Global Strategy Group asked 903 information workers across America about how they come up with the tech solutions they need at work. They found:

• 50 percent of information workers now turn to online databases and Web-based productivity apps, instant messaging platforms, video chat services and social networks to solve their own business problems without consulting IT.
• 19 percent of respondents had customized a web app or software for work.
• However, 35 percent of businesses still do not enable or encourage employees to create solutions independently.

The reason employees are taking matters into their own hands is fairly clear from the survey results – speed. Sixty-eight percent of workers who built or customized an app on their own completed the work in less than a week. Seventy-two percent of respondents said their internal development teams took more than a month to complete requests.

“The speed of business is increasing, and that’s driving a greater user demand for solutions,” Allison Mnookin, VP and GM of Intuit QuickBase, explained in an interview. “Information workers are seeking ways to compete. How do I be more nimble? How can I be more efficient?”

Other recent surveys have found IT is simply overwhelmed with keeping up with consumerization and the seemingly endless parade of devices and platforms it brings, so perhaps their slow response is understandable, but so is the desire of a tech-savvy workforce to get things done quickly. Employees increasingly import the expectation of painless, speedy IT from home to work. “Business users believe their pain should be solvable. In their personal lives, they’re starting to use technologies that suggest to them there must be a way,” said Mnookin.

Should IT resign as sheriff?

So is this move toward increasing tech independence a good thing, particularly as teams are spread more broadly in terms of location, creating added coordination challenges with distant IT departments? According to Intuit, employee-built solutions are working. Eighty-two percent reported their solution is still being used within their organization or team. And even if IT tries to stop the spread of this DIY ethos, it appears they have a hard time doing so: 17 percent of workers said they select tools and software to meet their needs even without IT approval.

There are also other reasons for IT to empower rather than try to control workers’ DIY impulses: Stifling them is irritating to the most proactive and presumably productive employees. Twenty-eight percent of all workers told Intuit they would consider moving jobs for a more technologically free work environment. For those crafty employees willing to go rogue and solve problems despite IT discouragement, that number increases to 50 percent.

Are these engaged and solution-orientated workers really the ones organizations want to lose? “Here are employees that see problems and want to fix them, and for most companies, those are the employees that you love,” said Mnookin. “And those are the employees that, with the wrong policies, you put most at risk.”

Which isn’t to say IT should suddenly take a completely Wild West approach. “Certainly, there are important rules in terms of data, governance and security that IT has always been the champion of and will continue to be important,” Mnookin said, but overall she is a fan of IT letting its hair down a bit when it comes to releasing employees’ tech creativity.

IT increasingly realizes the world is changing. They can’t do it all and they’re better off provisioning and checking on the things they care about from a governance perspective than just locking down employees, knowing that a certain proportion will just do this regardless.

If you view your role as enabling business to compete and serve customers successfully than that demand for the speed of change will be impossible [for IT] to meet alone. I think the old model of everything is build and solved by IT is going to die.

Do you agree with Mnookin that IT needs to loosen up and let motivated employees solve more of their own problems without interference?

Image courtesy of Flickr user toolstop.

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They started with two goals: Submit an idea, find an idea. The plan was to create a super-simple, employee-friendly platform that would be in tune with an employee base with growing social networking skills.

The perspective underlying Brainstorm

Brainstorm, as used at Intuit, manages over 5,500 ideas. Individuals can track ideas, but no one person is interested in all 5,500. The app’s Pipelines feature allows business unit managers and other interested parties to keep track of subsets of ideas. Even within similar activities, like customer service from one product to another, there are different criteria for moving from idea to action.

Ideas are initially handled at the department or team level, where the most detailed knowledge resides. As the vetting process continues, appropriate business units get involved, but idea management tends to start at a lower level, where processes can be unique. Milbourn noted:

If you don’t create space for the teams, allowing them to make local decisions, then the ideas fall off…. We’ve found teams or departments within a product group making local decisions and then bringing those to their leaders.

The process used in Brainstorm cuts the time spent in the innovation funnel by vetting ideas at lower levels in the organization.

How does Brainstorm enable follow-through?

Ideation is just the start of the innovation process. Milbourn explained how Brainstorm enables follow-through on ideas:

The tools need to allow for fluidity because ideas are fluid. We make it easy for others across the organization to question, validate, suggest other people to go talk to … all so the idea can go from a two paragraph description to a specific problem that can be acted upon.

Brainstorm gives ideas visibility by either explicitly forwarding them from one person to another or by tracking activity in a way that signals something important is going on. Decisions start to happen when people with responsibility or passion start to notice this activity.

But innovation isn’t always organic. Sometimes there is a specific need. Brainstorm’s Challenges feature allows anyone to lay out a customer problem or strategic priority and request focused ideas.

By virtue of ideas going directly into a challenge — we collapse what is normally “organizational pinball” to find the right person into a direct dialogue.

Challenges have really come to life. The [Brainstorm] development team has heard from users that sometimes they don’t have a great idea to push, but they still want to participate in the innovation process.  Challenges give them something to work towards.

Do ideas stay in Brainstorm throughout their development?

I asked Milbourn if ideas stayed in Brainstorm throughout their development or whether they move to another tool. He explained:

It depends on the team with the idea. Teams may need more advanced project management and turn to QuickBase, SharePoint, or wikis. Intuit has a pretty open approach — use what’s best for the team. Some ideas continue their development inside Brainstorm given the collaboration and notification capabilities. Teams find that every now and then an outsider will chime in with something useful. Staying inside Brainstorm, versus moving to a team-only tool, provides continued company-wide visibility to the project.

In client organizations, Milbourn says it depends on whether the organization already has a set project management system. If so, then teams are likely to shift into that tool as the idea matures.  However, sometimes even those projects have the Brainstorm page as the introduction to the ongoing project and then add links to the formal project management system.

Where companies don’t have a history with formal project management tools, the ideas can stay in Brainstorm. “Brainstorm is being used in ways we didn’t plan. We continue to do research to see what we can learn from that.”

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• Who is using the app?
• Where are they using it?
• What are they using it on?
• Based on the time, what is the likely persona of the person using the phone?
• How much money do you have in your pocket?
• As a piece of software can I interrupt you?

Once a piece of software has that context, the possibilities to make better software for users and for productivity open up considerably. It sounds like Green can’t wait for that to happen.

My own choice of whether to go desktop or online was complicated by being a Mac user. The single Mac version of Quickbooks has been panned by reviewers. Accounting software was my “sticking point” last year when I went through the PC to Mac transition that Scott has been writing about.

I chose to run Quickbooks Premier under Parallels on my MacBook. This sufficed for a year, despite an underpowered machine and major inconvenience. Recently, I gave up on the desktop and transitioned onto Quickbooks Online. After a month of use, here’s what I’ve learned about the differences between Quickbooks on the desktop and online.

• Price: Quickbooks 2010 costs $300 (street price), while Quickbooks Online Plus is $35/month. Even if you upgrade your desktop software every year, you’ll pay more to be online.
• Accountant access: Providing access for my accountant is what prompted my switch to Quickbooks Online. With desktop Quickbooks, we’d have had to set up port access through our router’s firewall, and she’d have only had access when I had Parallels booted. If my laptop was away from home, she wouldn’t have had access at all. With Quickbooks Online, I simply authorized her, and she has access 24/7.
• Dashboard: The dashboard and status report screens are different between desktop and online Quickbooks. The desktop screens are packed with more information and options for navigating your data. The status report, called Company Snapshot, is highly customizable on the desktop, but not online. In this area, I definitely miss the desktop version, which gave me a better “at-a-glance” update on my company’s finances, without having to run reports.
• Security: While I backed up my desktop data, using a single storage location (my home office) for the files left me vulnerable. Quickbooks Online uses redundant back-up; for extra security I can download and store a copy locally as well. Since being online I don’t have to worry about my accounting data being compromised if my laptop is stolen; it’s no longer stored on the machine.
• General usability: The menu system is simpler and more logical in Quickbooks Online. Client and vendor summary screens are both more usable online, too. Although both the desktop and online versions of Quickbooks carry ads for Intuit’s premium services (like payroll and merchant accounts), the ads are less intrusive online. And being online is definitely more convenient than using Parallels. There are two features I find weak online. You can customize forms, but not as much as the desktop allows. Calling up lists as tables that can be bulk edited is very convenient on the desktop; it’s missing online.
• Bottom line: There’s a price to pay in cost and features for the convenience and data security of using Quickbooks Online, but I find it well worth paying.

Would you feel comfortable doing your accounting in the cloud?

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So what’s new for Quickbooks users in 2010? Intuit says it has streamlined the install process from 15 screens to only six for small businesses with simple accounting needs. You will be able to edit multiple items in the lists of items/customers/vendors at one time in a spreadsheet-style screen, and data can be pasted into those lists from Excel. There are new form templates, and more form customization options, including decorative backgrounds. For more advanced customization, there is integrated access to design services. Quickbooks 2010 users will also have the ability to put their signature on their checks directly within the program without printing them.

Some of the more useful-sounding new features are the additions to the Company Snapshot screen that was introduced in Quickbooks 2009. This screen can now be personalized to display the data most relevant to the user’s particular business. If this works half as well as described it will be a great improvement to what was already one of my favorite features in the 2009 version. This is the most promising sounding of the newly announced features, but also reminds me of iPhone cut-and-paste: something that should have been there from the beginning.

Another promising area of improvement is in the reporting. According to Intuit, it’s been “radically redesigned” to make it easier to find reports. The redesign includes a carousel view, a list view, and a search function, as well as a favorites view to show your most frequently used reports. As a Quickbooks user who gets annoyed by having to wade through a massive library of irrelevant reports to get to the few that I use regularly, the ability to go directly to a favorites list of reports sounds very helpful.

The most common complaint about Quickbooks has long been its heavy-handed marketing of add-on services inside what is already an expensive software package. Unfortunately, most of the new features being advertised for Quickbooks 2010 appear to simply be an extension of Intuit’s philosophy of aggressively generating add-on sales. Popular personal finance management app Mint.com, recently purchased by Intuit, also operates under a business model based on selling add-on services through its software. But there is a major difference between Mint and Quickbooks: Mint is free.

The features that fall under what Intuit calls its “Connected Services Strategy” include:

• Document Management Services: These services allow attaching of documents to transactions, accounts or people in Quickbooks. The documents are stored online and can be accessed remotely and shared with others.
• Check Deposit Services: With Intuit Check Solutions for Quickbooks, users can deposit check payments into their bank account. For companies not already using Quickbooks merchant services, the check service starts at $19.95 per month plus per-transaction fees.
• Marketing Center: Quickbooks’ integrated email marketing service (currently in beta) offers customizable templates for creating email marketing campaigns and then allows for tracking the results of those campaigns through Quickbooks data.
• App Center: Everyone has to have apps these days, and Quickbooks is no exception. The App Center contains about 25 programs in four categories. The apps cover topics from task management to project management to online storage. Most are only peripherally related to the core accounting functions, and all but a few require a monthly subscription (although free trials are available).

Quickbooks Pro 2010 will have a single-user MSRP of $199.99, or $179.99 for an upgrade. Pre-order street price for the full version Quickbooks Accounting Pro on Amazon.com is currently $149.99. Quickbooks Premier 2010 will have a single-user MSRP of $399.99, or $349.99 for upgrade buyers. The pre-order street price on Amazon.com is $249.99 for the full version of that program.

If you bought Quickbooks 2009 in the 60 days before the 2010 product announcement on Sept. 28, you will likely be happy to know about the existence of a little-advertised “migration upgrade” program that provides free upgrades to the 2010 version. To get the upgrade if you qualify, make sure you have your 2009 product’s information and sales receipt and call 888-246-8848. Stay on the line after the menu options to reach customer service.

Are you a Quickbooks user? Are you planning to upgrade your software?

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I recently had the opportunity to talk with two Intuit staff members to talk about Thumbstrips, Fashion Your Firefox, developing for Mozilla, and Intuit Labs.

Tara Tarapata, Group Manager for the Intuit Innovation Lab, and Scott Williamson, Software Engineer and an early developer of Thumbstrips, both gave me the impression that Intuit is an organization staffed by passionate people who are trying to shake things up in software development.

While I did not mention Thumbstrips by name in my initial overview of Fashion Your Firefox, I’ve since come to regret the omission. Since downloading the add-on, it’s become an integral part of my Firefox browsing experience.

Put simply, it allows you to view your history as a visual filmstrip of thumbnails in a pane at the bottom of your browser window. Definitely saves you time time digging for that page you forgot to bookmark when you’re involved in a deep dive and can’t be expected to keep track of every little link that might prove useful. Tara pointed out other uses, including comparison shopping, bug-testing for web developers, and as a live screenshot demo reel for giving presentations.

The add-on itself is only the beginning of the story. If you’re involved in developing apps for Mozilla, a behind the scenes peek at how Thumbstrips became one of the most-downloaded add-ons available is particularly illuminating.

Thumbstrips took its first steps in the Intuit Innovation Labs, a breeding and testing ground for promising ideas and applications in development at Intuit. The Labs allow software end-users to become an integral part of the development community. According to Tara, the purpose of the space is to make sure that the applications that end up in the hands of users has the functionality that they actually need. Using the website’s “Count Me In” feature, you can sign up to become even more involved. You’ll get access to new ideas as they arrive, interact with Intuit software engineers in the development process, and help guide the future of Intuit Labs itself.

From the labs, Scott said the next step was getting listed on the official Mozilla add-ons page. Once they were listed, download numbers skyrocketed. Eventually, Thumbstrips became so popular that the Intuit team decided to apply to become a Recommended app. Yes, that is a developer-initiated process. Thumbstrips was accepted, and now enjoys regular rotation in and out of Mozilla’s Recommended apps.

The last step, the actual inclusion of Thumbstrips in the list of apps featured on Fashion Your Firefox, came as something of a surprise to the add-on’s development team. They’d heard about the launch of the new web app, and were curious to see what was available. Scott actually discovered Thumbstrips’ inclusion when he clicked to expand the “Digital Pack Rat” category. Since its inclusion, downloads of Thumbstrips have gone up 200-300%, up to 400+ daily. Clearly Mozilla’s initiative is sparking some interest.

What’s ahead for Thumbstrips?

Tara says they unfortunately can’t devote much more of their internal team’s time to the add-on, but that’s where the beauty of the Intuit Labs community lies. They hope to open source the software soon, handing it over to interested developers so that it will continue to grow thanks to the efforts of those who helped maked it a reality to begin with. And Thumbstrips is just the beginning. Tara, Scott, and the rest of the Intuit team hope to break new ground in allowing as much of their catalogue as possible to become open source once in-house development stops. With the help of the Intuit Labs community, this could ensure that applications live on, evolving to meet user needs well beyond the lifespan of traditional, privately developed software.

Thumbstrips is available as a free download here. To learn more about or become a part of Intuit Labs, visit intuitlabs.com.

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