MYOB assumed a dominant role in the small business accounting space when Intuit announced it would no longer update its QuickBooks accounting software for the Mac. All that changed this week, when Intuit said they would revive QuickBooks, releasing a new version in the first quarter of 2003.
As competitors you would think MYOB would be disappointed that a former rival has decided to re-enter the market it once dominated, but that isn’t the case.
“I look at having a brand and a company like Intuit come back to the Mac as a validation that the Mac market is real,” Cynthia Mackewicz, General Manager of the MYOB US office, told MacCentral. “I think it’s good for the Mac market overall.”
For the past couple of years, MYOB customers have used their products without the benefit of having something to compare it to, feature for feature. Of course, the old QuickBooks was still around, but not having been updated for many years left it an easy target for a software company willing to give its customers what they wanted. MYOB executives aren’t concerned about the prospect of a head to head battle with Intuit’s newly announced product.
“Our customers have come by way of taking a look at our products in a vacuum, without having anything else to compare it with,” said Mackewicz. “I think our customers are savvy enough to know what they are getting with our Mac products — I welcome the opportunity to put my product up against Intuit’s, side-by-side and let MYOB stand up on it’s own.”
Besides a strong product line, MYOB feels it has another thing going for it — loyalty. At a time when other companies were leaving the platform, they stuck around and developed a product that consumers needed and wanted. Even with the introduction of QuickBooks, MYOB feels strongly that new customers will still choose them over Intuit.
“When you take a look at new customers coming to the Mac space, I think we’ll still be the market leader because of our dedication to the platform. We were one of the first developers to launch our products for Mac OS X because we believed in the platform — customers will see our company as innovative, forward thinking and that we’re well positioned to capitalize on future OS X technology.”
With six to eight months before Intuit is scheduled to release QuickBooks, MYOB has a lot of time to plan what they will do. What company officials said that plan will be is to stick to what’s been working for them all along.
“We’re staying focused on what our initial strategy and goals were, which is to become to the dominant Mac player in the small business accounting space — we will continue to drive our programs in alignment with that strategy,” said Mackewicz. “The fact that Intuit has decided to come back into the market is great news, but it’s not going to keep us from doing what we need to do, which is to continue to meet the needs of the market.”